Case Study: EMD Chemicals achieves centralized document control and streamlined processes with MasterControl

MasterControl Helps Make EMD Chemicals More Competitive

EMD Chemicals, the North American arm of Merck KGaA and market leader in effect pigments, faced a challenge of decentralised document control and manual quality processes across multiple sites (sales/servers in Gibbstown, manufacturing in Savannah, IT in Norwood and new facilities in Madison and San Diego). The company needed a centralized system to manage 20,000+ documents and to automate customer complaints, CAPA, training and other cross‑site workflows to harmonize operations and improve responsiveness.

EMD implemented MasterControl Documents (2005) and MasterControl Process (2007), migrating ~20,000 documents and rolling the system out to 650+ users across more than six sites (projected >1,000 after training). The solution created a single document repository, automated form routing and approvals, reduced manual work, and kept IT overhead low (the MasterControl admin spends about 1% of his time on the system; upgrades take ~half a day). As a result, processes run faster, quality subsystems are connected, and EMD reports improved efficiency and competitiveness.

EMD Chemicals

Lynn Riehl

Main System Administrator