Dynamic Transportation Planning 

Purpose

In Dynamic Transportation Planning you can select deliveries according to various criteria and then group them together to make shipments. Visit lists form the basis for the grouping and the sequence of deliveries in shipments. The system must create these visit lists before it can create shipments. You can select visit lists in Dynamic Transportation Planning according to Visit plan type, Execution date and Route.

The system identifies tours for a particular route and visit plan type, and creates the shipments in the correct order.

When executing Dynamic Transportation Planning, the system takes account of the capacity limit you have activated. Possible capacity limits are:

·        Usable load

·        Volume

·        Variable capacity

·        Number of stops

·        Maximum duration

·        Loading units

Dynamic Transportation Planning has the following features:

·        Grouping of several shipments with a single call

·        Evaluation of visit lists for the order of the customer visits and, if available, the vehicles and drivers to be used

·        Evaluation of the tour master for the sequence of shipments and the tour staffing (if this has not been predetermined by the visit list)

·        Consideration of the active capacity criteria when creating shipments

·        Listing of the compiled shipments as a proposal (simulation run) or for direct creation

·        Automation of all process steps

·        Consideration of speculative loads (deliveries, whose ship-to party is the driver for the visit list) that can be assigned directly in the visit list header or that can be recognized as speculative loads from their ship-to parties.

·        Consideration of deliveries that are directly assigned to a customer in a visit list

Process Flow

...

       1.      You can access the Dynamic Transportation Planning component from the SAP Easy Access screen by choosing Logistics ® Logistics Execution ® Direct Store Delivery Backend ® Transportation Planning ® Dynamic Transportation Planning.

       2.      The system selects the deliveries according to the information that you enter.

The route contained in the deliveries is an important control parameter. The system uses the route to determine the tours, which in turn determine the vehicles and drivers.

Dynamic Transportation Planning only takes account of deliveries whose delivery type is flagged for Transportation Planning in DSD Customizing.

If several deliveries for the same ship-to party are selected, Dynamic Transportation Planning treats these deliveries as a complete delivery.

 

       3.      The system selects the visit lists according to your entries. You can limit the selection according to visit plan type and route. The input field for the execution date of the visit lists is a mandatory field. The system only selects visit lists that are flagged as active (inactive indicator is not set) and for whose visit plan types the shipment document is flagged as a relevant document.

       4.      The system sorts the visit lists according to the following sort criteria and evaluates the visit lists in the sorted order:

                            a.      Visit plan type

                            b.      Route

       5.      The system selects the explicitly assigned deliveries.

       6.      The system identifies the speculative loads.

       7.      The system groups together the deliveries for a visit list.

       8.      The system assigns the selected deliveries to the first shipment in the order specified.

Assuming you have determined the capacity criteria and activated them in Customizing, the delivery data (weight, volume, loading unit and variable capacity) is compared with the limits defined in the vehicle master of the assigned vehicle. As soon as one of the limits is exceeded, the system does not assign any more deliveries to the shipment.

Whether the system assigns the remaining deliveries from the visit list concerned to other shipments or whether it disregards the remaining deliveries and starts evaluating the next visit list depends on several different factors.

Apart from capacity restrictions, the system distributes the remaining deliveries to other shipments if:

¡        No vehicle or driver is entered in the visit list.

¡        No speculative load is entered in the visit list.

¡        No speculative load was identified for the visit list concerned in the deliveries selected initially.

¡        The shipment document is flagged as a relevant document in the visit plan type of the visit list.

If the capacity limit of the vehicle is reached in the second shipment as well, the system creates a third shipment. The system repeats this process until all the selected deliveries have been assigned.

In addition to the capacity limits you have defined in the vehicle master for each vehicle, the system also checks – if activated - the limit for the number of stops and the time limit (maximum duration).

The limit for the number of stops means that the system can only assign the number of deliveries or ship-to parties within this limit to a shipment. The system treats all deliveries for the same ship-to party as a single delivery.

Speculative loads have no effect on the calculation of the number of stops and the duration. The systems regards customers who are entered in the visit list but are not receiving a delivery as a stop and also takes them into account when calculating the duration.

For the system to be able to use the time limit properly, you have to arrange your customers in a realistic itinerary and maintain the corresponding times. Only if these prerequisites are met will the system be able to calculate the times during dynamic transportation planning and compare them with the maximum duration limit.

As soon as an active limit is reached, the system closes the shipment and creates another one, provided the above-mentioned prerequisites are fulfilled. The system always checks the limits in the following sequence:

                            a.      Usable load

                            b.      Volume

                            c.      Number of stops

                            d.      Variable capacity

                            e.      Duration

                              f.      Loading units

You can use the Number of Attempts indicator in Customizing for the visit plan type to influence dynamic transportation planning.

If the Consider New Customers checkbox is flagged in the Rules area of the Dynamic Transportation Planning selection screen, the system groups together the deliveries that it could not assign to a shipment (because no suitable visit list was evaluated) into shipments according to the following criteria:

§         The system creates route-specific shipments.

§         The system does not assign deliveries without a route to a shipment.

§         The system uses the visit list type entered in the Visit Plan Type for New Customers field on the selection screen, and the route for the delivery to find which tour master is to be used.

§         If stipulated by the visit plan type, the system only creates one shipment per route.

 

Once the system has completed Dynamic Transportation Planning, it displays the corresponding log. You can navigate from the log to the display of the delivery. Once Dynamic Transportation Planning has been performed, you can branch to the shipments that have been created.

We recommend that you check the shipments created by the system after the production run, that is, after Dynamic Transportation Planning.

To check the shipments created by the system, call the Shipment List for DSD Transportation Planning and display the shipments.