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 Transportation Cross-Docking

Purpose

Transportation cross-docking supports the consolidation of deliveries from different supplying warehouses into common shipments to a customer or to another receiving warehouse. This consolidation can take place at one or more intermediate warehouses along the route to the destination; you can forward the goods at intermediate warehouses without needing to store or pack them (in essence, moving the goods “across the dock” from receiving to shipping).

The following illustration shows the data flow for cross-docking of sales orders:

Implementation Considerations

In Customizing, you must:

  • Specify which plants can act as cross-docking warehouses

  • Assign storage locations to each supplying plant to represent the stock at each cross-docking warehouse

  • Assign MRP areas to cross-docking storage locations to prevent stock at intermediate warehouses from being considered as available for planning

SAP delivers preconfigured movement types for cross-docking. However, you can create additional movement types in Customizing for Materials Management .

You can define cross-docking partners in Customizing for Partner Master Data . This specifies the storage locations in the source warehouse to be used when cross-docking goods are posted to a cross-docking target warehouse. If the system detects such a partner in a delivery document, it assigns the appropriate cross-docking goods movement type to the document.

The decision as to whether a shipment requires cross-docking can be made in one of the following places:

  • SAP CRM system during transportation route determination

  • A BAdI in the ERP system

  • The warehouse system

The cross-docking information determined in SAP CRM and the ERP system is passed as a proposal to the warehouse system, which can make the final decision about the next cross-docking steps.

Integration

Transportation Cross-Docking requires the following systems: SAP CRM, SAP ECC (the ERP system), SAP APO (for route determination), and one or more warehouse systems – either SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) systems and/or external warehouse management systems that provide the required functions.

The ERP system is linked to one or more warehouse systems in the transportation cross-docking process and acts as coordinator (or traffic controller) by:

  • Creating the inbound and outbound deliveries that model the goods movements into and out of the cross-docking warehouses

  • Performing the necessary transfer postings to update inventory management during the transportation steps between the warehouses

  • Updating the deliveries for subsequent warehouses based on changes to the transportation schedule you made in the warehouse system

  • Providing an overview of all process steps in the transportation cross-docking monitor

Transportation cross-docking can be used for outbound deliveries created from SAP CRM sales orders and for replenishment deliveries based on stock transfer orders.

By implementing some Business Add-Ins, you can also enable transportation cross-docking for inbound deliveries from your suppliers. For details on how to set this up, see the Customizing documentation for Supplier Cross-Docking (IMG path: Start of the navigation path Logistics Execution Next navigation step Service Parts Management (SPM) Next navigation step Transportation Cross-Docking (SPM) Next navigation step Basic Settings for Transportation Cross-Docking End of the navigation path ).

Features

Standard cross-docking in the ERP system assumes that SAP Warehouse Management controls all data flow through the entire process. However, this alternative transportation cross-docking method allows you to use the ERP system in a distributed environment to act as a central traffic controller, sending data to and receiving it from various warehouse management systems at the warehouse level. This offers the following advantages:

  • You can make changes to a transportation schedule in the warehouse management system that is currently processing the goods, then send the data to the ERP system. The ERP system then automatically adopts the schedule changes with the up-to-date information for subsequent cross-docking warehouses.

  • To expedite shipments, you can also bypass some of the stops that are automatically determined by the system and have goods shipped directly to the customer from any point along the route. For example, instead of cross-docking a shipment from Warehouse 1 to Warehouse 2 to Warehouse 3 and then to the customer, you could reroute the shipment to go from Warehouse 2 directly to the customer, thus shortening the delivery time.

  • You can have a mix of SAP and non-SAP warehouse management systems at the warehouse level. As long as they can communicate with the ERP system, there is no need to create data interfaces between each of the warehouses. All data is exchanged through the central ERP system via a unique BAPI interface.

  • In transportation cross-docking, the central ERP system determines when to create inbound and outbound shipping documents based on settings in Customizing. This allows you to build in a time period for error corrections (such as goods issue cancellations) without your having to intervene manually. For example, you might want to build in a 24-hour delay between the time when goods issue is posted for a shipment from Warehouse 1 and the time when the system sends an inbound document to Warehouse 2 to allow for last-minute changes.

  • You can use the Transportation Cross-Docking Monitor in the ERP system at any time to see the current transportation route for a given shipment. The report reflects the information as of goods receipt by a warehouse; when the warehouse processes the delivery and posts goods issue to the next warehouse, the ERP system receives the updated information. Otherwise, everything proceeds automatically, so there is no need for user involvement unless you need to make a change.