Transportation Lane

Use

You need transportation lanes when planning distribution and procurement between different locations. Products can only be procured if transportation lanes exist between the possible locations.

For information on change logging for transportation lanes, see Change Logging for Master Data .

For information on the where-used list for transportation lanes, see Where-Used List for Master Data .

Integration

Transferring Stock from one Location to Another

You can use transportation lanes to plan stock transfers between locations. You can:

  • Create a transportation lane manually in the SCM system

  • Store a special procurement type in the material master record in the ERP system

    When a material master record is transferred with one of these special procurement types via CIF, the corresponding transportation lane between the supplying plant and the receiving plant can be created the SCM system automatically.

For more information, see Automatic Creation of Transportation Lanes .

External Procurement Relationships

In the ERP system, the business relationship between a supplier and a plant (customer) is stored as a purchasing info record or outline agreement (contract or scheduling agreement). When you transfer this purchasing data to the SCM system, the system automatically generates external procurement relationships. At the same time, the system creates a transportation lane from the supplier to the plant. The external procurement relationship and transportation lane are assigned to each other.

For more information, see External Procurement Relationship .

You can also assign an external procurement relationship to a transportation lane manually.

Structure

A transportation lane is specified more exactly by the following:

  • The products that can be procured via this transportation lane

  • The means of transport that can be used for transporting the products being procured

You can create a transportation lane as follows:

  • For a specific product

  • For a product group

    This option is displayed only if you have defined at least one product group in Customizing for the product master.

  • For all products

  • For a specific mass selection

    Note that you can only use mass selection for products that exist at both the start and destination locations.

Product Procurement Parameters

The parameters for product procurement enable the system to find the valid sources of supply in the source determination process, for example.

Means of Transport

Means of transport are used to move goods between the locations of a transportation lane. The term covers trucks, ships, aircraft etc. You assign means of transport to a transportation lane and specify the associated parameters such as the transportation duration, transportation distance, and transportation costs. The system can also calculate the straight line distance (as the crow flies) from the geographical coordinates of the location.

Product-Specific Transportation

You can assign a product-specific means of transport to one or more products. You must have already defined this means of transport in the means of transport list.

You can assign the means of transport as follows:

  • You can assign a specific means of transport or all available means of transport to a product.

    To do so, you select a product from the Product Procurement list and choose the Create button in the Product-specific Means of Transport list.

  • You can assign one product or all existing products to a means of transport.

    To do so, you select a means of transport from the Means of Transport list and choose the Create icon in the Product-specific Means of Transport list.