>

SAP Supplies BHP Billiton with First Mining Industry-Specific Global Supply Chain Solution

World’s Largest Resources Company Leverages mySAP™ Supply Chain Management to Gain Flexible Planning Capabilities and Adaptability

Melbourne, AustraliaSAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that BHP Billiton has successfully implemented mySAP™ Supply Chain Management (mySAP SCM) to manage its global manganese business from the mines to stockpiles to end customers. BHP Billiton, the world’s largest diversified resources company, joins an ever-growing list of global companies leveraging mySAP SCM, the world’s leading supply chain management solution.

Key capabilities of mySAP SCM will help BHP Billiton manage every aspect of its global supply chain, enabling more visibility into operations, flexible decision-making, and integrated planning to reduce inventories and transportation costs.

“Our vision at BHP Billiton clearly is to become a demand-driven resources company and to move our entire enterprise-wide processes to a more customer-centric approach while reducing costs and improving our profitability,” said Marius Kloppers, chief marketing officer at BHP Billiton.

“By deploying mySAP SCM, we will increase our flexibility to respond to our customer’s changing demands and we will be able to realize significant savings in our global supply chains by reducing inventories and handling costs.”

The implementation of mySAP SCM for BHP Billiton’s global manganese business was the first phase of a global rollout project of mySAP SCM. It was realized within a timeframe of nine months and comprised the usage of different capabilities of SAPâ Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO): demand planning, supply network planning, and global available-to-promise.

For the second phase of the rollout, BHP Billiton plans to extend the current supply chain solution model to include transportation planning and execution. BHP Billiton selected the SAP Trader’s and Scheduler’s Workbench (SAP TSW), a component of SAP’s industry solutions mySAP™ Mining and mySAP™ Oil & Gas, to specifically handle bulk transportation management. This enhanced solution model will be gradually rolled out to all commodities starting with iron ore and coal.

“Together with BHP Billiton, we have created a complete supply chain management solution that is unique in the resources industry,” said Nils Herzberg, senior vice president, Manufacturing & Distribution, SAP AG.

“SAP took the innovative approach of adapting functionality of SAP TSW that was originally developed for the petroleum industry but closely fit the needs of mining companies. Working jointly with BHP Billiton, we tailored it to directly meet mining-specific requirements. The co-developed solution component is now available in the latest release of mySAP Mining and will be made available to other customers in the industry.”

SAP will present its solutions together with its service, technology, and small and midsize business (SMB) partners at SAP’s main booth in hall 4 at CeBIT 2003, being held in Hanover, Germany, March 12-19.

For more information about mySAP SCM, visit http://www.sap.com/scm.

For more information about mySAP Mining, visit http://www.sap.com/mining.


About BHP Billiton
BHP Billiton is the world’s largest diversified resources company. It is distinguished from other resource companies by the quality of its assets; its deep inventory of growth projects; its customer-focused marketing; its diversification across countries, commodities and markets; and its Petroleum business.
With some 38,000 employees working in more than 100 operations in approximately 20 countries, BHP Billiton occupies industry leader or near industry leader positions in major commodity businesses including aluminium, energy coal and metallurgical coal, copper, ferro-alloys, iron ore and titanium minerals. The Group also has substantial interests in oil, gas, liquefied natural gas, nickel, diamonds and silver. More information is available at: www.bhpbilliton.com.

Note to Editors
The different SAP APO capabilities were fully integrated with BHP Billiton’s existing SAP ERP system and SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW). The implementation project also included the development of user-specific SCM portals for BHP Billiton’s sales and marketing professionals, distribution agents, and managers.



For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:

Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: +1 (800) 872-1SAP (+1-800-872-1727)

For more information, (press only):

Roland Edwards
+49 (6227) 7-44425
roland.edwards@sap.com (CET)
Bonnie Rothenstein
+1 (610) 661-8867
bonnie.rothenstein@sap.com
(EST)
Jennifer Roach
+61 2 99354-845
jennifer.roach@sap.com (AEDT)
     
SAP Press Office
+1 (610) 661-3200
press@sap.com (EST)
Uwe Schaad
Burson-Marsteller
+49 (69) 23 80 931
uwe_schaad@de.bm.com (CET)
Jason Wyse
Burson-Marsteller
+1 (305) 347-4327
Jason_Wyse@mia.bm.com (EST)