Basic concepts

Locations and nodes

Nodes are not supported by AVEVA Unified Supply Chain without a valid Spiral Network license.

For more information about checking for installed licenses, see the Configure your Licenses topic. Contact AVEVA support (spiral.support@aveva.com) for information about obtaining new licenses.

Network activities occur at locations. A location is a place which is part of the network of sites. A location might be a manufacturing plant, a supply depot, a customer and so on. At each of these locations there are one or more nodes.

A node is a particular place where a type of activity occurs. Nodes are used to define the links between locations. At a particular location many different types of activity can occur, and each type of activity occurs at a node in that location. Therefore one location can have many nodes. Separating locations and nodes allows a clearer definition of the capabilities of a location.

For example, in the diagram above Lake Charles and Assab are plants which supply material and are also have a demand associated with them. Corn Inc. is only capable of supplying the network, while Buy n Large consumes material only.

Material flows between the nodes on the network. In order for material to flow there must be a particular transport mode, such as by road or rail. This transport may sometimes be two-way, but is often capable of only being moved in a single direction. For example, in the diagram above Corn Inc. can only supply material to Lake Charles via rail, while Lake Charles and Assab can transfer material via pipeline, road or rail. Buy n Large receives material from both Lake Charles and Assab via road.

Material movements

Once locations and nodes are defined, it is possible to define the movements of material around the network. Specific types of material are moved around the network, and these usually have an associated set of properties.

Example: Corn Inc. can move Corn Ethanol to Lake Charles via rail. This corn ethanol is defined by a set of properties including density and RON. Within the Network model, the actual movements (there may be more than one shipment) of ethanol to Lake Charles occur within specific periods, and may be constrained in the size of the shipment.
Lake Charles may ship reformate to Assab via pipeline. Likewise, Assab may ship alkylate to Lake Charles via pipeline.
Both Lake Charles and Assab produce Gasoline 95 product, and these both have a demand for this product. However they may both also ship the product to their customer Buy n Large via road. Assab is also capable of shipping Gasoline 95 to Lake Charles via road, but the return (that is, Gasoline 95 from Lake Charles to Assab) is not possible.

Traded materials are used to represent the types of material that can be transferred. Traded materials are usually standard reference data. Although it is possible to use unique traded materials which are not published in the standard AVEVA Unified Supply Chain reference data, this should be avoided.

For each traded material there can be one or more grades. Grades are products sold from nodes. Grades are usually defined in AVEVA Unified Supply Chain, but must also be defined within your Network case by their associated specifications. This is done in the Grades page of the Network environment.