Route Determination
The route determines the means of transport and the legs involved. It influences transportation scheduling. For example, the system can determine from the route that goods are to be sent by rail to Boston. Therefore, during transportation scheduling, it takes into account how far in advance loading space in the freight car must be reserved.
Criteria for Route Proposal in the Sales Order
A route can be determined for every order item. Determining the route in the sales order depends on the following factors:
Country and departure zone of the shipping point
Shipping condition from the sales order
For example, it might have been agreed with the customer that the goods are to be delivered as soon as possible.
Transportation group from the material master record (Sales/Plant Data screen)
You can use the transportation group to group together goods with the same characteristics (for example, bulky goods or goods that must be transported in refrigerated trucks).
Country and transportation zone of the ship-to party (Control screen in the customer master record)
Note
If the ship-to party is changed in the sales order, the route is determined again for each item.
Using the delivery type, you can control in Customizing whether the transportation scheduling is to be executed once again after a route change has taken place.
The following figure shows how the route is determined in the sales order according to the data listed above.
Criteria for the Proposal of the Route in the Delivery
The shipping document type determines whether the route is determined again in the delivery. Since you only learn the exact weight of the delivery at the time of creating the delivery, it makes sense to determine the route again. For example, an overdelivery of goods could mean that the delivery is now too heavy to be delivered by air freight and must be conveyed by rail. It could also be that several partial deliveries are created for one sales order so that the total weight of the each delivery is now lower than the total weight that is recorded in the sales order. Thus, a smaller truck than originally planned can be used for the delivery.
For this reason, a weight group is used as an additional factor in determining the route. The weight group is determined on the basis of the total weight of the delivery. You can manually overtype the route that is determined by the system in the delivery.
Unlike the sales order where a route can be defined for each order item, the route applies to all items in the delivery.
The following figure shows all factors that the system takes into account when it determines the route in the delivery.
Consistency Check
Once a new route has been determined in the delivery, the system can check whether the route determined in the order item and the route found for the delivery are consistent. In the Customizing application, you can define a consistency check for each shipping document type.