Here is a small selection of photos from our recent Envision 2022 user conference.
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Canadian manufacturers will have until January 1, 2026 to update their Front of Package (FOP) labels. The reason behind this addition is to help Canadians avoid health risks associated with high levels of sodium, sugars, and saturated fats. The easy-to-read label will help consumers pick out healthier options more easily while shopping.In general, most pre-packaged foods that exceed 15% of the standard Daily Value (DV) for sodium, sugar or saturated fats will need to display the new FOP label. Small portions (≤30g) ... Read More
Within the formula management process, ProductVision’s Workflow feature dramatically simplifies the execution and tracking of workflows commonly encountered in product development. This may include new product development, reformulation projects, competitive analysis studies and raw material replacement projects. The Workflow feature allows you to create workflows for any ProductVision object, including raw materials, formulas, and projects. You may make as many workflows as necessary to meet your current Product development needs. For example, your formula approval processes may vary ... Read More
Ingredient statements (sometimes also called ingredient lists) are mandatory on almost all food, beverage, cosmetic, and personal care products. Each country has its own set of regulations surrounding these different items that can be tricky to keep track of due to the vast number of these regulations, many of which are ever-changing. For example: in 2017 Canadian regulations had many overhauls for food labeling, one of which was a change to how sugars-based ingredients should be grouped ... Read More
On January 1, 2020, the United Kingdom began their exit from the European Union and completed the transition on December 31, 2020. During that transition all EU regulations such as REACH and CLP were to be followed as before. But February 2021 is here and what has changed?First, UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will manage previous ECHA functions and be the lead in UK REACH. HSE will have the following duties:... Read More
As of January 1, 2021 (already postponed from January 1, 2020) per CLP Annex VIII, hazardous consumers mixtures, which are to be sold on the EU market, must be notified to Poison Centers and labels must be updated to include a unique formula identifier (UFI). The information provided to the Poison Centers will be utilized along with the UFI for emergency response. It will allow for more accurate advice and reduce over-precautious treatments to consumers.... Read More
Ever gone on vacation and looked for sunscreen? Looking for a diaper cream for your baby with diaper cream. You have probably noticed the over-the-counter (OTC) Drug Facts Label on these two products as well as over 100,000 other OTC products.Per the FDA. “In the Federal Register of March 1999, the Food and Drug Administration published the OTC Drug Facts Label regulation. This regulation required most OTC drug products to comply with the ... Read More
No matter which industry your products fall into (cosmetics, food and beverage, paints, or chemicals) you are faced with a barrage of testing to ensure your finished product(s) is safe for the consumer. Whether your testing needs are for Formula Stability, Shelf Life, Label Adhesion, Challenge Studies, Water Activity, or Moisture Sorption Isotherms; a solution is needed that allows you to easily track scheduled test protocols as well as one-time or scheduled tests. ProductVision’s Testing Module is the solution.... Read More
From 2019 to 2020 the U.S. organic sector again reported growth in both food and non-food markets. The Organic Trade Association states, "The U.S. organic sector posted a banner year in 2019, with organic sales in the food and non-food markets totalling a record $55.1 billion, up a solid 5 percent from the previous year." (https://ota.com/organic-market-overview/organic-industry-survey). Even with economic down turn and a pandemic, the organic sector thrives.Successfully walking through the organic ... Read More
The Book ModuleFulfilling regulatory document requirements often tends to be time-consuming and an arduous task. ProductVision's Book module makes it easy to create your Product Information File.The Book module allows you to combine documents, images, attachments and other data from within ProductVision easily into a single "book" created as an Adobe PDF file.You can easily define a "book" template using a simple interface specifying each section as a "chapter" ... Read More
Do you feel like banging your head when ensuring your products are complaint? Tired of researching? Has a formula been approved to only find out it has a restricted component? Guidelines and Restrictions Module is the answer to your woes! Guidelines and Restrictions Module is used for:Ingredient restrictions by country and/or jurisdiction for specific products/categories and usages.Product specific restrictions by country and/or jurisdiction or customer.Product restrictions by jurisdiction by product ... Read More
ProductVision provides extensive on-line help features that will answer many of the questions you might have when using the software. These features are a mouse click away using the “Help” option inside of ProductVision:The “Knowledgebase…” option accesses the ProductVision Support site which provides four complementary information sources:The Knowledgebase FAQ which gives detailed explanations of many of the ProductVision features and moreThe Video Library which provides entertaining step-by-step instructions for ... Read More
Image from MDPI.comTitanium Dioxide (Tio2) is used in loads of industrial and consumer products like paints, inks, paper, plastics, textiles, ceramics, construction materials, cosmetics, food and pharmaceuticals.Titanium Dioxide presently classified as non-hazardous has been proposed for re-classification as carcinogenic (cancer-causing) substance by the EU Commission per EU Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 on classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of substances and mixtures. See reclassification detail in 14th ATP (Adaptation to Technical Progress) to ... Read More
LOLI (List of Lists) provides regulatory lists for 115 countries including environmental, health and safety, international, inventories, and reference materials necessary for Safety Data Sheet as well as country specific cosmetics regulations and IFRA.The ProductVision LOLI Interface Module allows the user to view information contained in the LOLI database and to extract information from the LOLI database to user-defined properties, Resource chemical names, and GHS Hazard Statements. The key to extracting LOLI data onto the Resource ... Read More
With the current news headlines, remote working such as working from home is becoming more and more popular. The flexible ProductVision client offers many ways to help.As a standard Windows application, the ProductVision client will work within all remote desktop environments, including Microsoft Remote Desktop and Citrix. With a VPN connection to the office, those working from home can access the full power of ProductVision and continue working without any loss of productivity.The powerful Workflow Module enables users to continue to ... Read More
In 2017, updates to Canadian regulations for food labelling were approved with a 5 year transition period to adjust to these changes; not only was information such as the recommended daily values and rounding rules updated, but also the layout of both the nutrition facts table and the ingredient listing as well. ProductVision has added the ability to generate reports with these labels and ingredient listings based on these regulations (https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/c.r.c.,_c._870/index.html).You can see a full summary of the changes here (... Read More
On November 8, 2019 Congressman Sean Maloney of New York introduced H.R. 5017, Natural Cosmetics Act.The bill's formal title reads:To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to treat as misbranded cosmetics with packaging or labeling using the term “natural” unless the product meets certain standards, and for other purposes.The standout change is that the term "natural" is now defined within the bill. This is the first time ... Read More
Following several amendments and final consultation, The International Fragrance Association (IFRA) have now published the 49th Amendment with effect from January 10, 2020.The 49th Amendment introduces the revised methodology of Quantitive Risk Assessment for fragrance ingredients (QRA2). A review of the IFRA Categories for QRA2 means there are now 12 IFRA Categories with some having sub-categories to manage phototoxicity. There are therefore a total of 18 IFRA Categories (or classes) ... Read More
Annex VIII to the CLP regulations (EU “flavor” of GHS) was adopted in March 2017 (and amended in October 2019) to require companies that market products in the EU to submit hazard information about their products in a new, structured XML format. The compliance dates vary depending upon the use type of the product:The information in the submissions includes some of the information currently contained in sections 1, 2, 3, 9, ... Read More
Season's Greetings from everyone at ProductVision.We're already looking forward to 2020 with some exciting changes to make your product development process even better!The ProductVision® product development software is a product lifecycle management (PLM) system that manages all aspects of the product development process. Suitable for industries including paint & coatings, personal care and food & beverage, ProductVision’s comprehensive list of modules includes ... Read More
In April 2019, the FDA provided a draft guidance regarding declaring allulose in nutrition labels as well as the caloric content of allulose. Per the FDA:"This guidance also is intended to advise manufacturers of our intent to exercise enforcement discretion for the exclusion of allulose from the amount of “Total Sugars” and “Added Sugars” declared on the label and the use of a general factor of 0.4 calories per gram for allulose when ... Read More
Both the California Senate Bill 258 (SB 258) Cleaning Products Right to Know Act of 2017 and The New York Guidance Household Cleansing Product Information Disclosure Program, have been instituted to provide consumers with information regarding ingredients in cleaning products. Despite being similar, the two are different in several manners, for example, definitions and due dates.California SB 258 has defined the cleaning products as; household, institutional, and disinfectants, whereas New York has defined the ... Read More
At ASD, we are always working to improve the user experience for our clients when using ProductVision. In most cases, this means adding enhancements to the software itself via new modules or adding functionality to existing objects in ProductVision. Beginning with build 5.2.1002.1401, another layer of functionality was added to help users grow/retain knowledge by adding a Knowledge Base for ProductVision.This Knowledge Base can be found by going to Help ... Read More
On August 9. 2019 Illinois became the third state to prohibit the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals.The ban states. “Notwithstanding any other law, it is unlawful for a manufacturer to import for profit, sell or offer for sale in this State any cosmetic, if the cosmetic was developed or manufactured using an animal test that was conducted or contracted by the manufacturer, or any supplier of the manufacturer, on ... Read More
Nearly 30 delegates and seven members of the ASD team recently attended the 14th ProductVision users' conference. The 6th conference to be held in the UK, Envision 2019 was the most diverse UK-based conference to date with attendees from the UK, Europe and the US enabling experts from multiple industries to share ideas, tips and connect with like-minded users.The conference was the platform for ASD to announce many new and upcoming features, many of which are ... Read More
Those in the fragrance industry will no doubt be aware that The International Fragrance Association (IFRA) has recently announced the launch of the consultation on the IFRA Standards that will be part of the 49th Amendment. The consultation will close on July 21st, 2019 after which, depending on the outcome and comments received, IFRA will publish the newly revised standards around mid-August.The 49th Amendment includes a full review of the existing IFRA classes resulting in this changing from 22 distinct "classes" ... Read More
In 2016, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced new guidelines for the Nutrition Facts labels. Several changes were made such as the reporting of added sugars and reporting based upon the container size and “reference amounts customarily consumed”, or RACC. The changes were made to help consumers make more informed dietary choices. Many products on the shelves already contain the new label information. All manufacturers must be compliant by 2020 and 2021 (see FDA Proposes Extension for Nutrition ... Read More
The California Proposition 65 regulations grew out of a desire to inform the people of California of hazardous substances in products that they consume or come in contact with. This was enacted in 1986 as the Safe Water and Toxic Enforcement Act when voters approved it by a 63-37 percent margin.Proposition 65 requires businesses to provide warnings to Californians about significant exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. The act created the Proposition 65 chemicals list, ... Read More
ProductVision’s Formula Management Software shortens and streamlines your product development process, resulting in faster time to market. It automates formula development and management with automatic calculation of product and costing information. The ProductVision’s Formula Management software is a rapid product development tool that manages all aspects of the creation of product development from the initial concept through retirement. All recipe revisions are automatically maintained. New ingredients and recipes may be copied entirely from existing items, or you may create new ... Read More
There are many instances where you may need to merge a group of documents and/or images into a single “master” document, including:Sales Proposals which include costing spreadsheets Electronic Laboratory Notebooks Product Application Libraries Product Development Documents Product Information Files in the Cosmetics Industry in the EUIn these cases, it is common to have several disparate sources of information, such as Word®, Excel®, PDF documents, image files, PowerPoint® presentations, etc. that you need to combine into a single PDF document. The ... Read More
The UN GHS regulations are a great step forward in providing a universal system for assessing and communicating hazards of substances and mixtures, but it does not provide perfect harmonization for several reasons, including:Differing implementations of the GHS regulation Implementations of different revisions of the GHS standards County-specific additions of hazard categories not included in the GHS regulation Inconsistent assessments of substance hazards by different countriesThe UN GHS regulation uses what is known as a “building-block” approach. That is, it provides ... Read More
Early on (in the 60’s and maybe even before), many countries and companies realized the need for a consistent way of communicating the hazards associated with their products. These hazards may include physical hazards, such as flammability, explosivity, and corrosivity, health hazards, such as acute and chronic toxicity, carcinogenicity, and reproductive toxicity, and aquatic hazards.The problem was two-fold as there was not a consistent method of classifying hazards from country to country and there was not a consistent format for presentation of the hazard information on product labels and Material ... Read More
From all of us at Advanced Software Designs and ProductVision, Ltd., we wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May you have peace, joy, and happiness during this Holiday Season and throughout the New Year.
The IFRA 49th Amendment is bringing with it a number of changes both in terms of the resulting IFRA classes and more significantly for our customers, the underlying QRA 2 IFRA standards data. While the final set of new QRA 2 data is not expected to be finalised until at least Q2 2018, ASD is already working closely with our customers and those with direct relationships to IFRA to get ahead of the game and start building the new data structure. While ... Read More
GHS provides a consistent way to determine the hazards of substances and mixtures (preparations) and a standardized presentation of these hazards. The outcome of a GHS hazard determination may include:GHS Hazard Statements and hazard Classes and Categories GHS Precautionary Statements GHS Hazard Pictograms (symbols) GHS Signal WordsThis approach to classification is very similar to the earlier EU Risk and Safety Phrase approach used in their DPD regulation, where the new GHS Hazard Statements are somewhat equivalent to the now obsolete EU ... Read More
September 29, 2017 – The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced they are proposing an extension of compliance dates for the Nutrition Facts and Supplement Facts label final rules of July 26, 2018, to January 1, 2020, for manufacturers that have annual food sales of $10 million or more. The proposed compliance date for manufacturers that have food sales of less than $10 million would be extended to January 1, 2021.There has been increased concerns from stakeholders of food organizations to have ... Read More
