Hazmat order entry for chemical distributors, tested on orders you already shipped.

A plant buyer emails a PO: two drums of toluene, a tote of sodium hydroxide solution, and a pail of something called by a trade name. Your rep finds each item at the right package, carries its hazmat description from the item record, checks the approved source, picks a ship-via that fits the classes and weights, and sees whether any line needs a DEA record. Then the order goes to the warehouse.

For the test, AI reads copies of those POs with your item and customer data and drafts each order line by line: the package code, the basic shipping description, the ship-via your rules allow, and every check it ran. It releases nothing. A line it could not settle is marked for a person, with the reason.

The package is part of the item. The same solvent can ship in a closed-head steel drum, which DOT codes 1A1, an open-head one (1A2), a plastic drum (1H1) or a caged tote, usually 31HA1: a plastic inner receptacle in a steel outer packaging. A 275-gallon tote counts as bulk packaging, because for a liquid bulk starts above 119 gallons, so it is marked and handled differently from drums of the same product. A shipping paper may count packages as "12 drums (UN 1A1)" or, for bulk, simply "2 IBCs". The draft picks the item at the package ordered and marks a PO that names one you don't stock.

The description has a set order. Under 49 CFR 172.202 the basic description runs identification number, proper shipping name, hazard class, packing group, with nothing else in between and any subsidiary hazard in parentheses, as in the rule's own example, "UN2744, Cyclobutyl chloroformate, 6.1, (8, 3), PG II". An n.o.s. entry marked G in the table needs the technical names of the components driving the hazard, a package holding at least a hazardous substance's reportable quantity adds "RQ", and methanol has one table entry for domestic moves and another, with a 6.1 subsidiary hazard, for international ones. The draft copies the description from your item record and the producer's SDS and never composes one.

Ship-via limits come from the material. The 172.101 table lets acetone travel 5 liters per package on a passenger aircraft or by rail and 60 liters on a cargo aircraft, while the stronger hydrogen peroxide solutions under UN2014 are forbidden on both. Placards turn on weight: a highway or rail load of Table 2 materials under 1,001 pounds aggregate gross weight needs none, but that exception doesn't reach bulk packagings. The draft applies the ship-via rules your team sends and marks an order that needs splitting or another carrier.

Some everyday solvents are DEA listed chemicals. Acetone, MEK and toluene are on DEA's List II, and one 55-gallon drum of the straight solvent is over the 50-gallon threshold for a domestic sale, so the sale can be a regulated transaction, with records kept for two years. Blends containing those solvents are excluded, and so are domestic sales of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid, though both are listed. DEA also expects each such customer's authorized purchasing agents on file, in a list that may be updated yearly instead of on every order, with no shipment unless one of them placed the order, and a report of any order of extraordinary size or with an uncommon method of payment or delivery. The draft checks the buyer against the agent list you send and marks every listed line; whether to ship is your compliance lead's call.

Approved sources, and the number that has to answer. Many plants approve one producer, or one producing plant, for each material, and a substitute needs their written yes even when its spec matches. Every regulated shipment also needs an emergency response number that is monitored the whole time the material is in transit, and an answering service that calls back doesn't qualify. When the number belongs to a provider such as CHEMTREC, the shipping paper names your company or your contract number beside it. Your reviewer, usually the customer service lead or whoever signs your shipping papers, checks package, description and ship-via first, then price.

With your reviewer's yes against the success criteria, new POs get draft orders for about 30 days.

Every order waits for a person on your desk to approve it before the warehouse sees it, and your trained staff still prepare and sign each shipping paper. Any change to your ship-via rules goes into the success criteria first.

A second job is a separate decision with a price of its own.