Route Determination 

Use

The aim of route determination is to find the most cost-effective route from a large number of routes.

Route determination is executed in the routing guide. It runs automatically in the background, for example, when a Global Available-to-Promise (Global ATP) check is performed in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) during the creation of a sales order.

A report is available for simulating route determination in Extended Warehouse Management (EWM).

Integration

Route determination is integrated with the following components and systems:

Task	System
Perform the Global ATP check and backorder processing	SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO)
Create sales orders and perform the Global ATP check	SAP CRM and SAP APO
Perform the Global ATP check when converting unchecked deliveries into checked deliveries	ERP system and SAP APO
Make route-relevant changes, for example, change delivery date/time or goods recipient	Delivery processing in EWM
If you want to perform dangerous goods checks, you must ensure that route determination is integrated with the ERP component EH&S.	Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S)

The following table shows the systems that you must implement to define master data:

System	Master Data
SAP CRM	Business partners
ERP system	Materials (products) and plants
SCM Basis	Locations, transportation lanes, calendars, means of transport, and general transportation cost profile

Prerequisites

●      You have defined the following in the master data for transportation (route determination):

○       Locations

○       Transportation lanes

○       Zones

○       Routes

○       Carrier profile for routing guide

○       General transportation cost profile

●      You have defined the means of transport and, if necessary, hierarchical relationships between means of transport in the SCM Basis master data.

●      You have defined a transportation zone hierarchy in Customizing for SCM Basis.

For more information, see the Implementation Guide (IMG) under Routing Guide ® Define Transportation Zone Hierarchy.

●      If you want to perform route determination within a cross-docking context, you must define cross-docking routes.

For more information, see Route Determination as Part of Cross-Docking.

●      The routing guide is only called if the system finds the scheduling schema SCHEDL_ROUTE when performing a Global ATP check for a sales order in SAP CRM or for a delivery in the ERP system. You configure this in Customizing for SAP APO under Global Available-to-Promise (Global ATP Check) ®Transportation and Shipment Scheduling ®Scheduling with Configurable Process Scheduling ® Assign Schema and Activity to a Condition Type List. If you have defined your own scheduling procedures and they use the routing guide, you have to assign them.

●      To enable the integration of route determination with the components and systems listed above, you must activate the Activate RG indicator in Customizing for SCM Basis under Routing Guide ® General Settings for Route Determination.

●      If you want the master data in various systems to always have the same status, you must configure the distribution of master data.

For more information, see Distribution of Master Data.

●      To perform route determination as part of delivery processing, you must execute the IMG activity Activate or Deactivate Route Determination in Customizing for EWM.

For more information, see Goods Issue Process  ® Outbound Delivery ® Route Determination.

Features

Route determination comprises the following steps:

●      Static route determination

The system determines possible trips from the available routes. When doing this, the system can take into account the assignment of carriers to the geographical data, such as legs.

●      Scheduling

The system calculates the start or end dates/times for the trips found. When doing this, it takes into account calendars and times for the activities departure, transportation, arrival, and, transshipment:

○       Forward scheduling: the system uses a start date/time (for example, order creation date/time) to calculate the end date/time (for example, delivery date/time).

○       Backward scheduling: the system uses an end date/time (for example, requested delivery date/time) to calculate the start date/time.

●      Dangerous goods check

The system first checks if a product is classified as dangerous goods. The system then checks if the product is allowed to be transported within a series of jurisdictions, for example, countries using a certain means of transport. These two checks are performed in EH&S services.

If the product is classified as being dangerous goods and is allowed to be transported with the means of transport concerned, the system checks if the assigned carriers can accept dangerous goods. It rejects all carriers that do not offer dangerous goods transportation along the legs used.

●      Calculation of transportation costs

The system calculates the transportation costs for all the trips found. When doing this, it takes into consideration fixed transportation costs, distance-dependent costs (based on the transportation distance), time-dependent costs (based on the transportation duration), and weight-dependent costs. It also takes into consideration penalty costs for a premature or delayed delivery and a premature or delayed pickup. The costs that you have defined are evaluated by the system in the following order:

                            a.      Costs from the carrier profile

                            b.      Costs from the general transportation cost profile or costs that you have defined for transportation lanes

You can use the Business Add-In (BAdI) /SCTM/EX_RG_COST to determine alternative values or to adjust the values determined by the routing guide.

●      Additional filtering

If you want to use your own criteria to perform additional filtering on the trips that have been found up to now, you can implement the BAdI /SCTM/EX_RG_FILTER.

●      Valuation

For each request, the system first considers only trips with complete cost information, in other words, trips for which you have defined costs for all the legs. If no such trips exist, the system falls back on trips with incomplete cost information.

The system then sorts the trips according to the costs determined. If the system finds multiple trips with identical costs, it sorts the trips by date. In the case of forward scheduling, the system gives preference to the earliest start date. In the case of backward scheduling, it gives preference to the latest end date.

In cases where route determination is performed in the background, the system returns the best result only, in other words, the trip with the lowest costs. It rejects the remaining results.

When you simulate route determination, you can choose which results the system is to display:

■       Display the best results

■       Display all results

In this case, the system simply sorts the trips and does not reject the less favorable results. Furthermore, it also displays the trips with incomplete cost information.