On June 15, 2016, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council of the European Union reached a political understanding on the broad framework for a future EU Conflict Minerals regulation. This FAQ document outlines key elements of the political understanding of agreed upon on June 15, 2016.
From a legal perspective, only companies which are publicly traded in the USA under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must comply with the rules of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act. However, these companies will need to examine their whole supply chain in order to trace back the origin of minerals. In this way, the reporting requirements will be passed down the supply chain and will affect suppliers all around the world.
Under the CFSI approach to conflict minerals reporting, minerals are traced back to the smelter where they have been processed, with the smelters being independently audited for their conflict-status. This means that you need to find out from which smelters your company and your company's suppliers are sourcing the minerals in question. To learn more about the CFSI reporting framework, go to www.conflictfreesourcing.org.
The current version of iPCMP fully supports English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, German, and Portuguese. For the conflict minerals report form fields, all languages that are available within the Conflict Minerals Reporting Template (CMRT) can be displayed in iPCMP.
U.S.-based companies with a filing obligation to the SEC are required to report conflict minerals usage and origin for their entire company, so entities outside of the U.S. are in scope for conflict mineral reporting.
While your company may not have an obligation to report information to the U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), as a supplier to our company (based in the US) your information is critical to their ability to report to both their customers and, if required, to the U.S. SEC.
The iPCMP system allows for cascade and roll-up of the CFSI data from your supply chain instead of managing individual spreadsheets to and from your suppliers. This makes the whole process transparent and traceable.
Rolling up reports allows you to aggregate different supplier reports. This requires one or more Conflict Minerals reports which are created either by you or sent by your supplier. These reports may be visible in iPCMP database (e.g., which report is accepted by you on iPCMP system) or in CFSI/CMRT format or stored in your Online Storage.
When logged in to iPCMP, go to “Preferences”. Enter your current password and the new password into the corresponding fields. To save the new password, click the button “Change password”.
We offer on-demand webinars and regular workshops enabling you to use our tool more effectively. Click here to download the webinar on-demand. Click here to find out when and where the next workshop will take place. Whenever you log in to your account, you can click on the "?" on the top right hand corner of the iPCMP page to access the Help section. Here you can download the latest iPCMP User Guide which gives you an overview of the iPCMP functions. You can also access the iPCMP eLearning Module which walks you through the various functions of the tool with accompanying screenshots and videos.
For a more hands-on training there are two other options: As a Premium and Premium Plus License holder, you can book the iPCMP Interactive Guided Tour for a minimal fee of $95 to help speed up your reporting process. You can also contact a consultant directly for one on one training session.
Yes. You can subscribe for the desired license type via the admin ID. The data/reports that are currently saved on the system will be retained after the subscription change.
Yes, when you log in to the iPCMP using your unique login information for the first time, you are prompted to read the iPCMP usage terms and conditions and to agree to them.
Your information will be very valuable for lots of our iPCMP users as you probably have very good knowledge about the origin of your raw materials. Since you are at the start of the supply chain, you should choose the BASIC license, which is available for FREE, to enable you to handle incoming customer requests.
iPCMP is a web-based portal. So you just need to have Internet access and a web browser installed on your system. The Enterprise License can be either web-based or hosted within your company's firewall.
This form field asks you to provide proof of your organization's identity. Any company that signs up for iPCMP is individually validated by iPoint to ensure high data quality and avoid double registrations. There are three options for you to provide this mandatory proof of identity:
Your company has an iPCMP administrator who is responsible for giving you an account. If you know the contact details of your iPCMP administrator, you may get in touch with him directly. Otherwise, go to the iPCMP login page and request an account. The iPCMP support team will then refer your request to your company administrator.
The more of your suppliers sign up for iPCMP, the more streamlined your reporting processes will be. That is why OEMs and first-tier suppliers are interested in inviting their suppliers to sign up for the application. iPCMP provides a semi-automated process for doing so. Simply import a list of your suppliers into your account (click here to download a xlsx-template), and send out an invitation by email.
Even if a supplier chooses not to join iPCMP, you can easily import their Excel/ CMRT-based CFSI-compliant reports into the application to use them in your roll-ups.
No. When you roll-up the reports that you have received from your suppliers, the smelters that they have named will automatically appear in your report.
Those smelter entries have been created by iPCMP users. Their identity has not been verified. These smelters are assigned the state „unknown“. When used in roll-ups, they are flagged with a yellow traffic light icon.
There is a Master Smelter List, which is common to all users. When a user creates a new smelter entry, it is added to the Master List so that other users can benefit from the information.
The Master List is accessible in the „Management“ menu within iPMCP
iPCMP implements a one-way sync with the CFSI website. The iPCMP Master Smelter List is continuously updated with the current information on www.conflictfreesourcing.org.
In addition, the iPCMP master smelter list contains user-created smelters that have not yet been registered by CFSI. When CFSI eventually validates these smelters and adds them to their system, iPCMP will automatically map the information and update the smelter status in its master smelter list.
This approach combines the reliability of the CFSI data with the flexibility to manage smelters that are not yet registered.
The current iPCMP version supports the import of Excel files that are formatted according to the CFSI standard (CMRT). This is the most commonly used Conflict Minerals reporting framework. iPCMP also supports the import of XML files according to the IPC1755 data exchange standard.
Each window in iPCMP has an „Export to Excel“ button so you can export the currently viewed data. This also applies to each individual report in the system, no matter how it entered the system and what information it contains.
There is no limit.
Protection of intellectual property and data security are a top priority for most iPCMP users. That is why the software is configured from the ground up to ensure that you are always in control of what data is shared, and with whom.
The name of each company that is subscribed to iPCMP is visible to all members. This is necessary to allow members to address requests to other companies. This is the only piece of company-related information that is public within the software.
iPCMP does not disclose any information about business relationships between member companies. Individual companies can view only those requests that they have sent to their direct customers, or those that they have received from their direct supplier. The identity of the rest of the supply chain is hidden.
Roll-ups do not contain information about the identity of your suppliers, unless such information has been manually entered into a comment field of a report. Reports and roll-ups can not be shared automatically. Every time before a roll-up is sent out, the sender is required to review its content. The identity of contributors to a roll-up is hidden.
iPCMP contains powerful search, sort, and filtering tools to help you locate the information that you are looking for. Within the application, each table or list comes with a search mask with various options. For example, supplier requests can be searched, sorted or filtered, by due date, by request state, by request date, by declaration scope, and, of course, by supplier name.