I was one of the sources of information for that piece MS did on NAV in the chemical industry. Unfortunately they were a bit misleading in their approach. They never mentioned that to get that functionality you would need to either customize NAV pretty significantly OR use an ISV vertical product such as ours.
In short there are extensions to NAV that handle chemical/ink rather well including MSDS and GHS. I would not recommend customizing NAV for this purpose but rather use a product written specifically for that space.
Our product works with NAV directly and would love to talk with you if you feel we can help. You can learn more about our offering at www.vicinitymanufacturing.com