The New Era of Product Compliance
Alan Johnson
October 12, 2026
Regulatory change is now continuous and global. Substance restrictions, hazard classification updates, reporting obligations, and product-level disclosure rules are arriving from dozens of jurisdictions at once, and increasingly they don't wait for each other.
At the same time, the consequences of getting it wrong have expanded. It used to be a fine or a delayed shipment. Now it can be a blocked market, a customer that drops you from their approved supplier list, a class-action exposure, or a headline. Customers are pushing compliance obligations upstream through their supply chains, so even companies that never file a regulatory dossier are being asked to prove their products are safe.
And the data problem underneath all of this has become impossible to ignore. Every one of these obligations depends on knowing, with confidence, exactly what is in your products and what rules apply to each ingredient. Most companies still don't have that at a level they'd bet the business on.
However, amongst all these challenges are opportunities. The biggest is that, for the first time, technology exists that can close the gap between what a company needs to know and what it can practically find out.
Well-applied AI can read and interpret regulatory text at a scale no team can match, watch for changes across hundreds of jurisdictions, and connect those changes to a specific product portfolio with regulatory change monitoring. The shift is from "here's a 40-page regulatory update, figure out what it means for us" to "here are the twelve products in your inventory that this change affects and why." That's a different job.
Perhaps the more important opportunity is the one that comes before AI: getting the underlying data right. Companies that invest in a verified, error-free foundation for their chemical and product data are the ones who can trust what any intelligence layer tells them. It’s the difference between a fast car and a fast car with good brakes. The speed is only useful if you trust the vehicle.
The third opportunity is cultural. Product compliance can become a competitive advantage rather than a cost center. Companies that can answer a customer's substance inquiry in hours instead of weeks win deals. Companies that can demonstrate clean formulations ahead of a restriction get first-mover access to markets their competitors are scrambling to re-enter. The leaders in this space are already treating compliance readiness as a sales asset.
Here are some steps to get started:
- Audit your data before you audit your process. Pull a sample of your product and SDS data and check it against authoritative sources. Most teams are surprised by what they find. You can't prioritize what you can't see.
- Establish a single source of truth for product composition. Decide which system owns the product master and which system owns the regulatory determination, then make everything else reference those. This is unglamorous work, but it is the highest-leverage thing you can do.
- Map your obligations to your portfolio, not the other way around. Instead of reading regulations and asking, "does this apply to us?" start with your products and ask, "what applies to this?" It changes what you pay attention to.
- Build a change-monitoring habit. Whether it's a tool or a person, someone needs to own the question "what changed this month and which of our products does it touch?" Make the cadence explicit.
- Pilot AI on a bounded problem. Pick one well-defined use case and measure whether it produces trustworthy output. Start where you can verify the answer, then expand.
- Get the seams covered. Convene EHS, product stewardship, procurement, and R&D and write down who owns each handoff. The risk is almost always in the gaps between teams, not within them.
Alan will be discussing this topic further at FORUM26! Don’t miss his session, “Managing Product Compliance Risks and Requirements,” on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026, from 2:00 - 3:15 PM.
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About the Author
Alan Johnson
3E
Alan leads the strategic vision and execution of 3E’s global chemical and workplace safety product portfolio, ensuring leadership in the space. He is responsible for driving product innovation, expanding market reach, and aligning with regulatory requirements, all while delivering exceptional value to 3E’s clients worldwide.