BHP Billiton and Simulation Screen Shots

May 30th, 2006justin1028
in

BHP Billiton is the world's largest diversified resources

company. BHP developed a Strategic Value Chain management simulation to allow the organization to input market information

and demand, and cascade this demand down the value chain to identify how and where resources needed to be drawn from, and to

what extent the organization was required to restructure its distribution. At the same time, the simulation allows management

to explore with various strategic policies, like adding a new mine, adding a new alloy plant, adding and/or changing the

distribution lines, etc. The results of the simulation have been very good, and it is today used across the organization

within all the main segments of the value chain, as well as for a top-level management view on the entire value chain.

Find more info here.

src="http://www.simudyne.com/resources/bhp_1.gif" align="left" title="" border="0"> Screen Shot - Overview of the BHP Value

Chain - The red lines represent flow of material from Mines to Alloy Plants, to the Logistical network and into the Markets.

This simplified picture contains a highly complex flow of hundreds of product mixes and variations, but at this level, the

top-level management can get the quick aggregated view they need. Exploration options at this level can for instance be to

add a “New Mine”, a “New Converter” or a “New Alloy Plant”, etc.The Blue lines represent the flow of information

from the markets, back to the two main production units (Mines and Alloy Plants). As you see, the system can select its start

and stop times (bottom left) to allow management to explore within different time periods. The model can also be fed various

raw-data, either live data from APO (bottom right), or simulated data from the simulation model.

src="http://www.simudyne.com/resources/bhp_2.gif" align="left" title="" border="0"> Screen Shot - Markets - If you look

closely at the “tabs” at the top of the window, you see to the far left “Input”. Every view (Overview, Finance,

Markets, Logistics, Plants and Mines) has four different modes: Input, Output, Description and Setup. Viewing the markets

tab, we see that we are in input mode, currently looking at the prices for Alloy, having selected one of the sub-products.

The prices may be explored in all markets, or certain sub-markets. In this case we have selected Eastern Europe, products

distributed from a certain Plant, and a specific category of products (78HCFeMn). The model stores all variations of the

products, with all granularities. When the end-user operates the system, however, we try to provide only the relevant

information, and avoid “flooding” the end-user with too many parameters at the same time.

src="http://www.simudyne.com/resources/bhp_finance_input.gif" align="left" title="" border="0"> Screen Shot - Finance - The

screen shot shows input parameters for Finance. The diagram indicates the variable costs during the time period of the

simulation. Since this is an input, the user may click on each of the bars and modify the value of a variable by moving the

bar up or down. This way, alternative values may be explored.

src="http://www.simudyne.com/resources/bhp_output.gif" align="left" title="" border="0"> Screen Shot - Output Reports - When

the user selects Output (reporting) and Overview, a very simple and clear report is presented, containing all the relevant

key volumes, market information and financial information. Data is presented as “Budget”, “Actual” and “Simulated”.

This Budget and Actual data is stored in the SAP data warehouse, retrieved through the seamless SAP links, and presented in

parallel with the Simulated data. The end user can now drill down on any area of specific interest, or select various reports

for presentation purposes (like EBIT Waterfall Chart, MTU Waterfall Chart, etc.).

src="http://www.simudyne.com/resources/bhp_ebit.gif" align="left" title="" border="0"> Screen Shot - EBIT Waterfall Charts -

When the user selects Output (reporting) and Overview, a very simple and clear report is presented, containing all the

relevant key volumes, market information and financial information. Data is presented as “Budget”, “Actual” and

“Simulated”. This Budget and Actual data is stored in the SAP data warehouse, retrieved through the seamless SAP links,

and presented in parallel with the Simulated data. The end user can now drill down on any area of specific interest, or

select various reports for presentation purposes (like EBIT Waterfall Chart, MTU Waterfall Chart, etc.). To illustrate some

of the possibilities, an example of an EBIT Breakdown at overall levels is presented.

src="http://www.simudyne.com/resources/bhp_plant_production.gif" align="left" title="" border="0"> Screen Shot - Plant

Production Charts - Finally, it all boils down to what the requirements are for production of different units and products at

various times. As an output of the system, the simulator provides production profiles as shown in the screen shot, as input

to the production units. The same reports go to the distribution centers, for identification of the distribution flows.