Shipment Stages (SAP Library - Transportation (LE-TRA))

Shipment Stages

Definition

Stages contain information about the geographical factors for a shipment. In addition to their other functions, stages can also be the basis for calculation of shipment costs. Shipment stages can include:

Legs

A beginning point and end point is defined. For example, you can define main, preliminary, and subsequent legs.

Load transfer points

The point where a shipment is unloaded from one means of transport and loaded onto another.

Border crossing points

The point where a shipment crosses the border.

The various types of shipment stages are illustrated in the following figure:

Use

The following can be beginning points or end points:

Transportation connection point (train station or port, for example)

Shipping point (or loading point)

Plant (or storage location)

Customer location (may include customer’s unloading point)

Vendor

Freely-definable address

It is also possible to record other information about beginning or end points:

Warehouse number/dock door

Additional info, can be any text you choose (quay 17, for example)

If reference to a customer, shipping point, etc. is made in Customizing in the definition of a transportation connection point, that reference is automatically copied. This reference cannot be changed in the document since it was copied from the transportation connection point.

You can display the address of each point by choosing Address. If you are in change mode, you can make any necessary changes to the address. If you make changes to the address, the system simply creates a different address in the current shipment document.

Load transfer points can be defined the same way as beginning or end points of a leg. This means that it is possible to create a load transfer point at a customer or vendor address. If a transportation connection point is to serve as a location entry, however, it must have the corresponding characteristic Load transfer point in Customizing.

You can only use transportation connection points for border crossing points. These must already be set up in Customizing with the Border crossing point attribute.

Certain rules must be followed when defining a point in a shipment stage (a customer and a shipping point may not be entered at the same time, for example). You can find these rules in the Creating Shipment Stages Manually section.

You can create stages manually in the shipment document.

You can, however, use various functions to simplify or automate the entries:

Entering a route in the shipment header. The stages defined in Customizing for the route are then transferred to the shipment document. You can control which stages are transferred, if any.

Using the Leg determination function. Leg determination is a mechanism that generates stages. The determination is based on simple rules. It uses delivery information that is relevant for shipment in order to generate stages. (No optimization is involved here.)

See also:

Automatic Leg Determination

By combining various control parameters for the transfer of the routes with leg determination, you can automatically generate leg scenarios (either fully or partially).