Dashboard objectives

Designed in 2020-2021 to replace pVelocity desktop application, this dashboard provides cost information that are usually difficult to extract from Solvay IS systems: link between Raw Materials and customers or Business Units, detailed Bill of Materials with fully Integrated Costs, and Integrated Contribution Margin per machine Hour.

Dashboard structure and indicators

Cost Explorer pulls data from multiple sources (see “Data sources” section at the end of the page for more details), over a period of 24 months and combines them into 3 tabs.

Sales Volumes / Value and standard Finished Product recipes (Bill of Materials) are the core queries of this dashboard. By combining both, we are able to derive an extrapolation of Raw Materials consumption figures → Raw Materials figures shown in this dashboard are not actual purchasing / consumption figures.

Tab

What's in it for you

Triangle

This tab allows users to perform a wide range of analysis by navigating within the Finished Products - Customers - Raw Materials triangle.

For instance, it is possible to select a Customer and quickly find out what are the main Raw Materials this Customer is indirectly buying. Such analysis would be interesting for Purchasing teams to assess the impact on Raw Material purchases if such Customer stopped buying from Solvay.

Starting from the other side, it is possible to select a Raw Material and find out what are the Finished Products (and eventually Business Units and Customers) who are consuming this Raw Material. Such analysis would be interesting for Strategy / Commercial teams to assess the impact on sales if such Raw Material was not available anymore.

Bill of Materials

This tab allows users to see the Finished Products Bill Of Materials with integrated costs and utilities / fixed costs details.

For Finished Products that contain Intermediate Products from other Solvay plants, this dashboard provides more information than SAP itself:

all costs shown in this dashboard are Integrated Costs, meaning that transfer margin between plants are excluded and freight / duties costs between Solvay plants are included → Integrated Costs shown here are the same costs that are used by Solvay systems to calculate the Integrated Contribution / Gross Margins;
all production levels are shown, whatever the structure of the Bill of Materials in SAP. Using the Special Procurement Keys (SPK) from SAP Material Master data, this dashboard is able to display the Intermediate Product origin up to 15 levels.

The specificity of this tab is that it also contains Finished Products that have been manufactured but not sold yet.

Margin per Hour

This tab aggregates sales data with standard Finished Product recipes (Bill of Materials) to calculate Integrated Contribution Margin / machine Hour. Such analysis would be interesting in case of asset saturation, to find out which products allow to maximize margins under constraint.

The below table contains the list of all Cost Explorer indicators and where they can be found in the dashboard.
Select a dashboard tab to filter on its indicators or search for a specific indicator by typing its name.

/!\ Display is limited to 15 lines. Use > button to see other pages.

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Use cases

The below slides show how Cost Explorer can concretely be used in your daily job.

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Find out what are the main Raw Material(s) consumed by given Finished Product(s)

Find out what are the main Raw Material(s) consumed by given Customer(s)

Find out what are the main Raw Materials for given Business Unit(s)

Find out what are the main Finished Product(s) / Customer(s) which consume given Raw Material(s)

Access Bill of Materials with Integrated Costs and detailed view of Utilities and Fixed Costs

Analyze Integrated Contribution Margin / machine hour

Navigating in a Qlik Sense dashboard

Access here the Qlik Sense navigation tips

Access

This dashboard is accessible via the Qlik Sense portal. This requires you to be connected to Solvay network (in-situ or via VPN).

Access can only be restricted by GBU. There are no other restrictions (Region or Market, for instance) that can be applied.

As of now, the only GBU using this dashboard is Novecare, for employees belonging to the following teams:

Strategy & Transformation
Purchasing
Technology development / Process improvement
Product Stewardship

Request a Cost Explorer access for new users

Frequently Asked Questions

The Purchase Volumes / Values that I see in this dashboard do not match with the actual Volumes / Values I purchased
→ This is normal. Indeed, Raw Materials figures shown in this dashboard are extrapolated from Finished Product sales and recipes (Bill of Materials), these are not actual purchasing / consumption figures. The numbers are different for various "good" reasons, for instance: we usually buy Raw Materials several months before manufacturing the Finished Product (time lag), there could be loss / gain of Raw Materials in production vs. the product recipe (Bill of Materials), etc...
I am seeing products in the Bill of Materials tab for which I have no sales in the Triangle and Margin per Hour tab
→ This is normal. Indeed, whereas the Triangle and Margin per Hour tabs only contain the materials that were sold over the selected period of time, the Bill of Materials also contain the materials that were manufactured over the same period of time. This allows the users to see detailed Bill of Materials without having to wait for the product to be sold.

Need help?

EMEA : Julien Gena
Asia : Dina Li
NAM & LAM : Alex Milaszewski

Data sources

Cost Explorer sources are updated on the 9th of each month.

Source Type	Source Name	Content used in the dashboard
SAP BW	QVSBS_BW_QRY_MVCOPA01_0004 Profit & Loss (P&L)	External sales and integrated margin by customer from both WP1 (Rhodia legacy) and PF1 (Solvay legacy) systems. This is the same query that is used in CRM Analytics.
SAP BW	QVSBS_QRY_MVCOPA06_0001 Integrated Costs	Integrated manufacturing costs : raw materials + packaging + freight / duties of intermediates transferred between Solvay plants + fixed (machine / man / amortization) costs.
SAP BW	QVNVSC_BW_QRY_MPR_IC001_0065 Production data	Value streams and assets of finished products.
SAP BW	QV_BW_QRY_CPCSPR02_0001 Replacement of pVelocity For Raw Material Cost and Forecast details	Finished products Bill of Materials and cost forecasts calculated based on raw materials cost forecasts provided by GBU purchasing teams.
SAP BW	BW_QRY_MV_SPD01_0002 Purchasing	Raw Materials family / category.
SAP BW	BW_QRY_DAFICE01_0001 Exchange rates	CAR3 exchange rate type. More details here about the different exchange rates types used within Solvay.