Logical Communications Processes 

The communications processes between R/3 and an external transportation planning system can be divided by communications procedure into

Transaction Data

Transmiss Transmission of transaction data occurs in two directions. Planning requests (deliveries that are to be planned and assigned to shipments) are transmitted from R/3 to the forwarding agent and then planned shipments are sent back to the R/3 system.

If new deliveries are to be planned into a shipment, the scenario is as follows:

Outgoing Delivery / Planning Requests

Transmission of planning requests (deliveries that are to be planned) to a forwarding agent may occur via the following various procedures and communication stages in R/3:

Optional:

Mandatory:

In R/3, selection of deliveries to be planned is carried out either:

This report uses the delivery selection function in the same way as for shipment processing (transaction VT01n). A transportation planning point that corresponds to the planning system of the forwarding agent must also be specified.

Tran Transmission of deliveries is carried out as follows:

  1. Selection of service agent
  2. Selection of transmission profile
  3. Combining of deliveries and their corresponding items
  4. Determination of the items that are relevant for transportation (optional)
  5. Determination of the delivery’s dispatch location and point of destination where additional shipments are possible, e.g. main leg for sea transportation (optional)
  6. Accumulation of delivery items according to the freight class of the delivered materials and the freight code set that was specified.
  7. Customer functions for user-specific changes or enhancements of the combined delivery data and IDocs
  8. Creation of the IDoc (one IDoc per delivery document with the option to combine several IDocs into packets)
  9. Transmission of the IDocs to a forwarding agent

Deliveries that were changed in R/3 (transaction VL02) after they have already been reported to the forwarding agent are automatically re-transmitted to the forwarding agent immediately after the changes are posted (provided they are relevant for transportation). This function is activated by a link to message control. When a change is made, the whole document, rather than just the changed data, is re-transmitted.

The following graphic illustrates the scenario for transportation-relevant deliveries that have been changed after data was initially transmitted to an external transportation planning system:

If a delivery is deleted in R/3, this deletion command is transmitted automatically to all forwarding agents that had previously been planning that delivery for assignment to shipments. The delivery document is deleted in R/3, although, in certain circumstances, some references to this delivery that are still open may exist in externally-planned R/3 shipment documents. Shipment documents with these open references cannot be changed in R/3 until the change command is received from the forwarding agent for the document that no longer contains that delivery.

Incoming Shipment

The incoming shipment IDocs TPSSHT01 are interpreted, checked, and then used for creating, changing, or deleting R/3 shipment documents that are then posted afterwards to the database.

The functional process flow can be described as follows:

  • Importing the IDocs via the ALE layer
  • Interpretation of the IDocs, resulting in the creation, changing or deletion of shipment documents. The individual stages for creating/changing each shipment document are determined by the shipment header, the shipment items, stages, dates, and handling units.
  • Posting the created/changed documents

Outgoing Shipments

In the case of externally planned shipment documents, if you have a shipment status in Customizing that is exceeded or not reached, you can have a fixing or release message sent to the respective forwarding agent. To do this, use the IDoc TPSSHT01. After the freeze message is transmitted for a shipment document in R/3, the corresponding shipment in the planning system can no longer be changed. Similarly, a release message from the R/3 system means that the shipment document can be changed again in the planning system.

Status Transmission and Error Processing

Automatic processing of logical errors (errors that occur as a result of the message content) is carried out in the R/3 system using the workflow options provided by the ALE layer. The receiving system can react to a logical error by sending back an error message using IDoc SYSTAT01. The IDoc is constructed so that the error source can be localized precisely.

Workflow can be set in R/3 so that the employee responsible is informed when this error message is received as a reply to the transmission of delivery data to a forwarding agent.

You can make the relevant settings in Customizing for the R/3 transportation planning point so that an error message can be created and sent as a response to the forwarding agent upon receipt of incorrect incoming shipment documents.