1. Case
Study
North Star BlueScope Steel Selects BIRT
to Improve Operational Efficiency and
Leverage IBM Maximo > CompaNy profile
Joint venture between BlueScope
“When I saw a demo of tools Actuate provided, I knew right away it would increase visibility of our Steel and Cargill Inc
essential operations and help the management team run the business with improved operational
efficiency and agility. Establishing a single reporting framework and dashboards became a top > iNduStry
Manufacturing
priority for our development staff.”
— Miguel Alvarez, NSBSL President > loCatioN
Delta, Ohio
North Star BlueScope Steel LLC (NSBSL) is resulted in information remaining in silos
a steel manufacturer that prides itself on throughout the organization” states Brian > ChalleNgeS
its safety, track record of on-time delivery Baird, a Certified Maintenance and Reliability • Lack centralized and stan-
performance and customer satisfaction. But Professional at NSBSL. dard business intelligence
NSBSL began to struggle to achieve these • Need to provide easy-to-use,
NSBSL executives and management wanted
objectives without a standard business self-service BI capabilities
a unified view and understanding of the
intelligence (BI) solution to empower its • Enhance visibility into
business operations. However, NSBSL did
employees and management team. operations
not have a solution that could collect this
• Leverage data in Maximo and
NSBSL leverages IBM Maximo® Asset information and deliver it in an integrated,
other related systems
Management to manage asset life cycle easy-to-use format. NSBSL employees had
and maintenance, work orders, inventory, to follow manual processes which were
> SolutioN
purchasing and accounts payable. Critical time consuming and error prone in order to Integrate Actuate’s open source
business information resides in the Maximo bring the information together for analysis. based BIRT with IBM Maximo and
system, as well as in multiple other enterprise And management often did not know the other applications
applications. source of the information collected and what
assumptions were used when analyzing the
Challenges
> BeNefitS
data. • Empower users with unified
“We have a very hands-on, entrepreneurial “We needed a solution that would empower dashboards, self-service BI
culture, such that if an employee is asked to people to do their jobs by providing the right • Facilitate sound, timely
complete a task, they just figure it out and information when they need it, where they are business decisions
get the job done. However, this environment and in the form required to get the job done,” • Speed time to market
impacts our standardization efforts, and has recalls Baird.

2. Case Study: North Star BlueScope Steel
the Solution Business users can take advantage of easy-
to-use ad hoc reporting to manipulate
NSBSL selected BIRT (Business Intelligence existing or create new reports, without
and Reporting Tools) technology from relying on IT or expecting users to develop
Actuate to provide a unified business high-level technical skills.
intelligence (BI) framework for IBM Maximo “We wanted to gather all
and other mission-critical systems. “Actuate’s a phased approach
NSBSL will roll out the Actuate BIRT business intelligence in one
open framework, using BIRT, allows us to
pull in data from any source and leverage solution to its users in multiple phases. In framework. No other solution
our investment in Maximo, as well as any the first phase, NSBSL is partnering with brought everything together
pertinent business data from our ERP and Actuate Professional Services to develop like Actuate and BIRT.”
process systems. With the other BI tools we an enterprise deployment strategy, and
integrate Actuate BIRT with Maximo version
- Brian Baird, CMRP,
considered, it was much more difficult to pull
data from multiple systems,” states Baird. 6 and the ERP system to deliver intelligence Application Development and
wherever the user is working - from the Support Engineer
NSBSL selected Actuate based on the
Maximo user interface, Microsoft SharePoint,
following criteria:
the Actuate Information Console, or a
• Ability to leverage IBM Maximo investment component in a dashboard (see fig. 1).
with proven track record of integration
In the future phases, NSBSL will replace
• Interactive dashboards for all staff levels
its other reporting solutions with Actuate
• Ease of use and minimal/zero training
BIRT, enabling NSBSL to display data from
• Flexible development options and access
multiple sources on a single interface—from
to any data source
IBM Maximo to real-time feeds on electricity
• Strong customer support and
usage, weather or other systems.
collaboration
NSBSL will make the solution available to
NSBSL is replacing multiple, disparate
all of its 350 employees—from executives,
reporting solutions with a single, standard
purchasing, operations and quality
BI framework comprised of value-added
engineering managers—to external users
functionality from Actuate and the open
such as third party vendors and customers
source BIRT reporting platform (Actuate
(see fig. 2).
BIRT). NSBSL will deliver actionable BI to
its users through interactive dashboards
with KPIs and operational reports.
2
Figure 1: BI Framework with Actuate BIRT: Multiple Access Points and Data Sources, without a Data Warehouse

3. Case Study: North Star BlueScope Steel
Benefits facilitate sound, timely business decisions
by giving management insight where and
empower business users with dashboards when they need it, using the BIRT Interactive
and ad hoc reporting through a unified Viewer and dashboard technology to filter
Bi framework. NSBSL plans to arm its information. Management can access rich
employees with actionable information intelligence in patterns and benchmarks that “The BIRT designer is
based on their roles and security levels. Ad can be used to optimize the manufacturing
process and avert errors. Users can
straightforward to learn
hoc reporting enables them to find concise
answers from large quantities of data—fast. determine which perspective helps them and has a large on-line user
And the Actuate solution will provide insight do their job better, and IT will not have to community, active on BIRT
throughout the extended enterprise, from change or add data sources or data sets to Exchange, that got me up
suppliers to customers to partners. meet their needs.
and reporting on several
reduce time to value since BIRT requires databases quickly.”
minimal training but produces powerful
- Matt Morris, Reliability
results. The Actuate solution provides ad hoc
reporting and the ability to modify Maximo Engineer, NSBSL
reports without SQL or database skills,
reducing reliance on IT. According to Baird,
“Our engineers learned how to write reports
in BIRT from an Actuate road show. Actuate
BIRT is rich in functionality yet still easy to
use. And, our users just get it.”
Next Steps
NSBSL plans to continue its phased rollout,
upgrading from Maximo version 6 to version
7. The Actuate BIRT framework ensures
smooth migration without disruption in
Figure 2: Securely delivering information to a Maximo reporting. NSBSL will complete
broad community of users
conversion of its ERP reporting to Actuate
BIRT to further unify the reporting process.
provide standards and promote regulatory
NSBSL also plans to push BIRT content
compliance by having ready access to data
to mobile devices and meet EHS, OSHA
required by auditors. Actuate will help
and regulatory compliance requirements.
NSBSL standardize business and reporting
According to Baird, “BIRT has provided
processes to prepare for and satisfy the
the flexibility, ease-of-use and powerful
needs of auditors. “BIRT will be the standard
functionality that NSBSL needs for its
for any reporting done at NSBSL. Everyone
standard business intelligence solution. We
will use the same solution and speak the
are excited to expand our use of Actuate
same language,” states Baird. “This ensures
BIRT and improve operating efficiency going
that the data is accurate and that we are
forward.”
delivering a single source of the truth,
regardless of what database or application
the data resides in.”
3

4. Case Study: North Star BlueScope Steel
about NSBSl actuate - the people behind Birt
Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse
North Star BlueScope Steel (NSBSL) is a BIRT open source project. ActuateOne
50-50 joint venture between BlueScope is a unified suite of products for rapidly
Steel (Melbourne, Australia) and Cargill Inc. developing and deploying BIRT-based
(Minneapolis, MN). The facility is strategically custom Business Intelligence applications
located to deliver hot rolled bands to coil and information applications. Applications
processors, cold roll strip producers, original built with ActuateOne provide one user
equipment manufacturers, steel pipe and experience regardless of task or skill
tube industry and steel service centers. The level; are supported by one server for any
technology used at NSBSL allows a rapid deployment including cloud and are built
conversion of scrap steel into hot rolled with one BIRT design that can access and
coils. The company is dedicated to achieving integrate any data source - including high
excellence in safety, quality, on-time delivery volume print streams. ActuateOne adds rich
performance and customer satisfaction. data visualizations, including interactivity,
dashboards, analytics, and deployment
options to web and mobile BIRT applications,
helping organizations drive revenue through
higher customer satisfaction and improved
operational performance.
Actuate has over 4,600 customers
globally in a diverse range of business
areas including financial services and the
public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is
headquartered in San Mateo, California,
with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed
on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For
more information, visit the company’s web
site at www.actuate.com or visit the BIRT
community at www.birt-exchange.com.
actuate Corporation Tel: (888) 422-8828
2207 Bridgepointe Parkway Web: http://www.actuate.com
Suite 500 4
San Mateo, CA 94404