Visit Control Process 

Use

Visit control offers you many possiblities, from planning customer visits strategically (basis Visit Plans) to actually performing them (basis Visit Lists).

Visit control groups together customers that are regularly visited or have deliveries made to them on periodically recurring days (for example, every Wednesday). You can also assign a driver, and if necessary, a co-driver and a vehicle (tractor and, if necessary, a trailer) to each visit plan.

The system uses the visit plans to generate visit lists for specific days during a set time period. You can adjust these visit lists manually. You can, for example, insert an additional customer, remove an existing one or change the vehicle or the driver. In practice, visit lists are used as the basis for planning shipments, in other words, for goods deliveries and controlling customer visits.

Process Flow

Ideally, Visit Control functions as follows:

...

       1.      Maintain visit plan

When planning a visit plan you create and manage visit plans.

       2.      Generate visit lists

The system uses a report of visit plans to create visit lists for a specific period of time. This means that the system uses the regular objects in a visit plan (for example, every Monday) to create a visit list for every applicable day in a regular object within the specified period.

Before the system saves a newly created visit list you can specify a means of transport and a driver by implementing a BAdI method.

 

       3.      Process visit lists manually

Visit lists form the basis of day-to-day activities. Visit lists display which customers are to be visited in which order on a set day. They may already state the driver and/or the vehicle involved.
If changes are made at short notice in day-to-day activities because of a public holiday, you can make the appropriate changes to the visit list by manually inserting or removing a customer.

¡        Cancel a visit to the customer in question

¡        Change visit to another date (and to another visit list).

We recommend that you delete visit lists that were not processed because of a public holiday, after you have transferred the affected customers to other visit lists.
You can move an entire visit list to another day by manually changing the execution date of the visit list.

 

Note that corresponding visit plans are not affected by changes to visit lists.

 

       4.      Map customer appointments as a time stream

The system saves all visit or delivery appointments for a customer as a time stream. The system determines these appointments from the rule objects in the visit plans, taking into account possible non-appointments and the visit lists that have already been created and may have been adjusted manually.

The visit plan category for a visit plan or visit list is very important when creating time streams. In Customizing, you can assign a calendar type to every visit plan category. Based on this Customizing setting, the system can create several time streams for a customer for each calendar type, for example, a time stream for outbound appointments and one for visit appointments.

If you have not assigned any calendar type to a visit plan category the system will not create a time stream.

The system creates a time stream, as standard, for each year.

The system uses these time streams in order processing to determine a customer’s required delivery date, as long as you have flagged the underlying order type as DSD-relevant in Customizing, and have assigned the relevant calendar type.

The system creates a time stream either using the report /DSD/VC_CAL_FILL, which you can schedule as a regular background process, or automatically following the initial request from the system regarding these appointments. The system needs the time stream

¡        In order entry when determining the required delivery date, based on planned visit/delivery appointments, using visit control and

¡        In the customer master (DSD Additional Data pushbutton, Visit Information tab) when selecting a calendar type. As soon as the time stream is available, the determined appointments appear in color in the calendar.

       5.      Order processing

For visit/delivery appointments planned with visit control to be taken into account in order entry, you must flag the order type used as DSD-relevant in Customizing, and must also assign a calendar type.

As soon as you have created an order with a flagged, corresponding order type, the system uses the assigned calendar type and the minimum lead time to check the next date planned for a visit/delivery to this customer, and then enters this as the required delivery date. The system takes this date from the customer’s time stream. If there is still no time stream available, the system creates the time stream when it creates the order.
If the visit list/plan that underlies this appointment has a route, the system incorporates this route in the order. Otherwise the system carries out SAP standard route determination.

       6.      Dynamic Transportation Planning

Using dynamic transportation planning the system automatically groups deliveries to form shipments. Visit lists are a tool for determining the itinerary sequence when creating a shipment and, in some cases, may also specify a vehicle and a driver. The system updates the numbers in the underlying visit lists created for shipments using dynamic transportation planning.

Note that if changes are made to shipments the same changes are not automatically made to visit lists.

If in the Customizing table, Activate Sales Area Processes you have set the identically named indicator, the system only assigns deliveries with the same sales area (as the underlying visit list) to a shipment. The system also checks whether the assigned driver is created in this sales area.

For more information about dynamic transportation planning, see the documentation for Transportation Planning in the Direct Store Delivery component.

 

       7.      Route Accounting

As soon as deliveries/visits have been performed and the drivers have returned to the plant, all the existing data must be processed. Further processing is performed with Route Accounting in the Direct Store Delivery component. Route Accounting considers whether there was an underlying shipment or visit list for the deliveries/visits performed.

¡        Successful deliveries, goods sold, or orders received are documented using order creation and change (optional), and deliveries.

¡        The system creates an SD sales activity for an unsuccessful visit, in other words, a visit for which no delivery exists and no order/deliver can be created,. This SD sales activity details why the visit was not performed. The system updates the document number of this SD activity type in the underlying visit list for the corresponding customer.

For more information about route accounting, see the documentation for Route Accounting in the Direct Store Delivery component.