2.4 Transportation Management with SAP ERP
2.4.4 Important Functions in the Shipment Document
In addition to editing the shipment document and its data, you can make use of helpful tools in ERP Transportation Management to support your processing efforts:
• Transportation planning
• Route determination
• Subsequent freight unit split
• Transportation tendering
• Freight cost estimation
• Shipment tracking
• Graphical shipment information system
For your transportation planning needs, you have access to aplanning listwith which you can freely select and allocate deliveries from a delivery due list for existing or new shipment documents (see Fig.2.20). At that point or a later time, you can select criteria defined by you (such as all unplanned deliveries that must leave Hamburg for northern Germany the next day). In the Planning screen, you can create new shipment documents. The deliveries can either be individually or
Fig. 2.20 Planning list with delivery allocations to shipments
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collectively allocated to the shipment documents using the drag-and-drop function.
For every individual shipment document, you can branch to its overview screen and edit details from there.
Interactive transportation planning. In Fig.2.20, you can see an example of the interactive transportation planning screen. An existing shipment with a delivery was augmented by two other shipments ($0001, $0002), each of which has a delivery allocated to it. The temporary shipment numbers ($) indicate that documents have not yet been saved. In the delivery queue (in the illustration below), there are further deliveries that have not yet been planned.
Route determination is a function that you can start manually or automatically when the statusPlannedis set (see Fig.2.21).
Starting with the details on the transport route and route determination settings in the shipment type, a route is generated according to the sequence of shipment stages. Subsequently, a stage sequence is generated that serves all pick-up locations
Fig. 2.21 Route determination in the ERP shipment document
before the route is begun. At the end of the route, further stages are added that lead to all ship-to parties. Following the route determination process, you have the opportunity to interactively alter the order of the stops along the route before the actual shipment stages are generated.
Route determination result. Figure2.21shows the result of route determi- nation for a shipment of three deliveries (from Dresden to Frankfurt and Munich), for which no legs are defined.
Sometimes a vehicle cannot be loaded in such a way as planned in the transpor- tation plan, because, for example, the dimensions of the vehicle or the load were incorrectly entered. In such a case, you can perform a subsequent freight unit split, to divide a partial delivery into a new freight unit. If, for instance, the rear door of a truck cannot be closed because the last two pallets are hanging out of the back of the truck by 5 cm, you can use the subsequent freight unit split function to reassign those pallets as a new delivery, to which you can allocate another shipment document. Then the two pallets can be unloaded. When the documents are printed out, you will then receive the correct shipping documents and the planning situation in the system corresponds to what has taken place.
Transportation tendering serves to obtain an offer from one or more freight forwarding agents. In order to perform the tendering process, the shipment docu- ment must indicate at least one stage and one defined freight forwarder, and have the status Planned. You can indicate the tender details and a target price in the tendering data. To determine a target price, you can use the freight cost estimation function, which you can access from the shipment overview screen. The freight cost estimation tool uses the shipment data to perform a cost estimation without, however, generating a freight cost document in the database (see Sect. 2.4.6,
“Freight Cost Calculation”). Instead, the costs are temporarily calculated and presented as a decision-making aid in the context of the shipment document.
A bid invitation is then transmitted to the freight forwarder named in the shipment document header, either by sending a bid invitation message or placing it on a tendering portal, where the forwarder has direct access to the bid invitations directed at him. The forwarder can accept the bid invitation, accept it with alterations (such as an altered pick-up time) or reject it. He can also suggest a purchase price. The transportation planner can then check the tendering status in the ERP shipment document and either award the contract or send a bid invitation to another forwarder.
Afreight exchange can also be used as a forwarding agent. This enables the transport demand to be placed on an open or closed marketplace for transportation services. If the offer is accepted by a forwarding agent or carrier on that market, that offer is assumed in the shipment document with the carrier’s name, so that it is obvious who will perform the transport.
The ERP shipment document is linked to an event management process for the tracking of shipments. If a shipment document is created and given the status
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Planned, the individual milestones and attributes of the shipment are transferred to Event Management, where they are used to generate an event handler. This event handler allows the status of the shipment to be tracked based on status messages that are transmitted via EDI, mobile device, the Internet or manual entry. The status messages can be viewed with a comparison of target/actual values in the tracking view of the shipment document. The standard process generates an event handler for the shipment and monitors all scheduled processing, departure and arrival dates of that shipment. If configured accordingly, you also have the option of tracking individual freight units or packaging units (such as pallets or containers) of the transport. More information on the topic ofEvent Management can be found in Chap.5, “Controlling and Reporting”.