SUCCESS STORY
North Star BlueScope SteelIndustry• ManufacturingSolutions• OpenText™ Magellan™ Analytics Suite• OpenText™ Magellan™ Data Discovery• OpenText™ Magellan™ BI & Reporting

Data, dashboards and drill downs:
North Star BlueScope Steel makes
costing clearer through analytics
Steel band manufacturer uses OpenText Magellan Analytics Suitefor a fuller, less resource-intensive view of customer costing andimproved profitability

Results
Analyze costing data to pinpoint
higher profit potential
Understand customer trendsand needs
Monitor KPIs related tosafety compliance withself-service dashboards
Enable predictive maintenance“Now, in a few seconds, I can do all thecomparative calculations needed, be it monthover-month, quarter-over-quarter or any othertime period. What we’ll do is oftentimes study
cycles of selling or view certain things thatare going on in the market and apply these
additional factors to the overall analysis.”
Mike Nippo

IT Solutions Manager
North Star BlueScope SteelData, dashboards and drill downs: North Star BlueScope Steel makes costing clearer through analytics

A wholly owned subsidiary of Australia-based BlueScope, NorthStar BlueScope Steel is headquartered in Delta, Ohio. It produces
and supplies hot-rolled steel bands for coil processors, cold-rolled
strip producers, pipe and tubers, equipment manufacturers andsteel service centers. Founded in 1997, the company is the largest
scrap steel recycler in Ohio, recycling nearly 1.5 million tons ofscrap steel every year.

analysis and build purchasing breakdowns. The technology would
have to eliminate the manually intensive process already in place,collecting data automatically from a variety of sources, includingMicrosoft® Access® databases and eventually even thecompany’s electric arc furnaces (EAF). That way, the company
could reallocate staff and save on resources, all while better
meeting customers’ needs.

Better analysis, fewer resources

Automated data collection and analytics

By 2015, North Star BlueScope Steel was already using OpenText™
Magellan™ BI & Reporting, the BI and reporting component ofOpenText™ Magellan™ Analytics Suite, as a business intelligenceplatform, visualizing production and financial data through reports
and dashboards. But, the company realized it needed a new tool toassist in another area of the business that had been lagging due tooutdated technology. Costing, at the time, was still being managed
through Microsoft® Excel®, a time-consuming process that saw
disparate areas of the enterprise manually collecting data in a file solarge and inefficient that it could take up to 10 minutes just to open.
The system clearly wasn’t meeting their needs.

After considering three different solutions, North Star BlueScope
ultimately opted to upgrade to the full analytics suite by adding
OpenText™ Magellan™ Data Discovery to its existing Magellan BI& Reporting implementation. Offering an advanced approach toanalytics, the tool allowed the company to automatically access,blend, explore and analyze data. With that data available at its
fingertips, the company could start to better understand the impact
on profitability that events, such as plant delays and bottlenecking,might cause, drilling down to a cost-per-minute understanding ofits business dynamics.

“We had spreadsheets stored everywhere,” said Mike Nippo, IT
solutions manager at North Star BlueScope. “They were large. They
were slow to load. One person was inputting all the data, all theinformation in there. And it was prone to error.”
North Star BlueScope needed a more efficient tool to help it moreaccurately understand its costing data and workflow, so the company
could use it to engage with customers, conduct market-based“Now, in a few seconds, I can do all the comparative calculations
needed, be it month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter or any
other time period,” said Mike. “What we’ll do is oftentimes study
cycles of selling or view certain things that are going on in themarket and apply these additional factors to the overall analysis.”“As a manufacturingfacility, we have a lotof regulations to follow.
By having automated,interactive dashboards,
we can track and manage
compliance. We utilize
the reporting capability inOpenText BI & Reporting
to ensure that regulators
have access to theinformation they want tosee, including the criticallyimportant date andtimestamps of all safetyrelated incidents.”
Mike Nippo

IT Solutions Manager
North Star BlueScope SteelData, dashboards and drill downs: North Star BlueScope Steel makes costing clearer through analytics

Improving profitability
Through the use of the full suite, North Star BlueScope can now
better engage with its business. By analyzing its costing data, thecompany is able to delve deeper into the grades and mixes of steel
most likely to generate higher profit margins, identify customers
apt to switch products and determine future needs. “We’re trying
to leverage that to really look further out to help make better
decisions down the road,” Mike said.
It’s also easier to present up-to-date costing and sales information toits executives and sales teams, breaking it down as required. These
reports mean the company no longer has to wait until the end of themonth to make informed decisions but can do so sooner and more
intelligently whenever it needs to. Comparing data to see changes
and trends, tracking the performance of individual sales reps andaccessing information for regulatory and safety reviews are all easierthan ever.
“As a manufacturing facility, we have a lot of regulations to follow,”
Mike said. “By having automated, interactive dashboards, we cantrack and manage compliance. We utilize the reporting capability
in OpenText BI & Reporting to ensure that regulators have accessto the information they want to see, including the criticallyimportant date and timestamps of all safety-related incidents.”

Down the road, as North Star BlueScope expands the applicationof technologies, such as the Internet of Things, it will be possible
to integrate data points from plant machinery into the full Magellan
Analytics Suite to analyze electricity consumption, weather patterns,
material usage and steel prices, establishing a better view ofupcoming requirements and sales potential.

Continuing the evolution
Building on its success, North Star BlueScope plans to continue
leveraging and improving its OpenText usage, creating a Center of
Excellence to ensure analytics is being used to its fullest companywide. With that in mind, the team is evaluating additional OpenText
solutions to build on its foundational components and extend it evenfurther into a full, AI-powered analytics platform, including machinelearning and text analytics. Additionally, North Star BlueScope is also
evaluating the pairing of OpenText™ Magellan™ with the voice-based
Amazon Alexa service to create instant voice-activated access to thelatest customer and plant status information.
The new functionality will help the company predict potential
equipment failures. “If we can learn from that, obviously we can beproactive instead of reactive,” said Mike. “Reactive is ‘slow it down.’
Proactive is, ‘Let’s fix it before it becomes a problem’.”

About OpenText
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through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
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visit opentext.com.
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