New AI tool for traceable supply chains & complete sustainability data

tec4U-Solutions GmbH and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) have collaborated to develop an intelligent assistance system that helps manufacturers to comply with legal requirements on product safety and sustainability across supply chains. Compliance with the relevant regulations - from the European chemicals regulation REACH and the RoHS regulation to carbon footprints and ecodesign requirements - is essential in order to avoid liability risks, production downtime and reputational damage.

In order to automatically close information gaps in the communication of product-related sustainability data and thus reduce product liability to a minimum, tec4U-Solutions and DFKI have developed the AI-based application CoChecker as an intelligent extension of the established material compliance platform DataCross. In practice, full compliance with regulatory requirements often fails due to missing or incomplete supplier data. Even well-established systems such as DataCross, which rely on structured supplier communication and product declarations, reach their limits when information is missing. Such gaps are considered a risk factor of the first order - both legally and economically. One way to close them is to carry out a risk assessment with chemical analysis of the product - a time-consuming and cost-intensive process. Industries with a high number of variants and a dynamic supplier structure, such as the electrical and electronics industry, face the challenge of keeping compliance statements up to date in a constantly changing environment. Manual tracking is time-consuming, error-prone and not economically scalable. In industries such as mechanical and plant engineering, a lot of material-related information is available as legacy data, e.g. in parts lists or drawings, but is often unstructured and not standardized. Due to long product life cycles, the quantity of these documents is enormous, but their data quality in terms of digital processing is often inadequate.

AI replaces missing information with validated probability values

This is where CoChecker comes in. The AI-supported add-on module intervenes as soon as supplier information is missing or incomplete in DataCross. Using structured data analysis, probability models and semantic searches in internal and external data sources, CoChecker automatically determines valid replacement information. The AI first attempts to identify a component in the DataCross database. If no information is available, the system falls back on alternative products with high attribute similarity. On this basis, it calculates a probability value for comparability. This allows existing product data gaps to be closed in a targeted manner - and manufacturers or retailers receive a comprehensible, reproducible assessment of their product's compliance with regulations. Another way to minimize data gaps is to tap into digitized but unstructured and heterogeneous data sources. To this end, special information extraction processes are being developed so that information can also be extracted from analog sources such as technical drawings, data sheets and reports.

Future prospects for AI: intelligent sustainability and compliance assistance

tec4U-Solutions is currently working on the implementation of a front end for the CoChecker. Stefan Nieser, Managing Director of tec4U-Solutions, comments: "The intelligent use of artificial intelligence in our own product development is of great strategic and economic relevance for tec4U-Solutions. We financed the project over a year and a half from our own funds - also to show that self-initiated research can be a viable and economically sensible path for medium-sized companies." The CoChecker AI application is also being continuously developed in this spirit. Plans include researching standard market prices for certain product groups (e.g. standard parts) and automatically evaluating complete documents for relevant sustainability information. In the future, this could also allow carbon footprints, recycling rates or REACH-related ingredients to be extracted directly from product documents and processed digitally.

Information on the CoChecker at: https://cochecker.de/en

tec4U-Solutions GmbH
Saar-Lor-Lux-Stra?e 13
66115 Saarbr?cken
Germany

https://www.tec4U-solutions.com

Stefanie Huber
s.huber@tec4U-solutions

tec4U-Solutions GmbH supports companies in fulfilling legal and customer-specific requirements in the areas of material compliance, sustainability, circular economy and eco-design. The company offers practical consulting and software solutions - from analysis and process consulting to data collection in the supply chain. With its own data communication tool DataCross, tec4U enables flexible and legally compliant data collection from suppliers as well as comprehensive evaluations for the creation of proof of conformity for customers or authorities. The company was recognized as a TOP 100 Innovator in 2025 for its innovative performance.

This release was published on openPR.