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Function documentationUse of Drivers in Freight Order Management

 

If you work with vehicle resources and drivers, you can assign drivers to freight orders and take them into account during planning. Note that this function is supported for road freight orders and trucks only.

Prerequisites

  • You have defined your drivers as business partners and indicated validity, non-working times and absences. For more information, see Definition of Business Partners and Driver.

  • You have optionally defined a default driver. You do so by assigning a driver to your default vehicle resource (resource master data, Transportation tab page). If you use this vehicle resource in your freight order, the assigned driver is automatically copied to the freight order if you have not yet assigned another driver to it. For more information, see Definition of Resources.

  • In your freight order type, you have made the relevant driver settings:

    • You have indicated if one driver or a driver team (two drivers per stage) are to be assigned. Note that indicating the number of required drivers is a prerequisite for the driver-specific fields to be displayed on the freight order user interface.

    • You have indicated if drivers are to be assigned per transportation stage or per freight order.

    • You have indicated whether these settings can be changed in the freight order or not.

    For more information, see Customizing for SAP Transportation Management under Start of the navigation path Freight Order Management Next navigation step Freight Order Next navigation step Define Freight Order Types End of the navigation path.

Features

You have the following options:

  • Assigning a single driver or a driver team

    Assigning a driver team is recommended for time-critical orders, for example, rush orders. In this scenario, two drivers are in the cabin and take turns driving and sleeping.

  • Assigning drivers to the entire freight order or to individual transportation stages

    You assign a driver to an entire freight order if this driver covers the entire freight order from source location to destination location. You assign a driver to individual transportation stages if this driver covers a certain number of transportation stages but then another driver takes over. In this scenario, only one driver is in the cabin at a time (that is, per transportation stage).

  • Assigning drivers not defined in master data

    You can assign a driver who you have not defined in master data to your freight order. For example, this is useful if a driver is only entered at check-in or check-out, or if a driver is not employed by your company.

When you assign drivers and save your freight order, the system performs a number of checks. For example, a driver must not be assigned several times to a transportation stage or to two overlapping freight orders. Moreover, the system checks the driver's validity and availability within the time frame of the freight order. You can also perform these checks by selecting Start of the navigation path Check Next navigation step Document End of the navigation path or Resources. The Driver Assignment Status indicates if you have assigned the number of required drivers to your freight order.

Activities

You can assign drivers on the following tab pages of the Freight Order user interface:

  • General Data

  • Overview

  • Drivers

On the General Data and Drivers tab pages, you also find general information about the assigned drivers. If you mark a driver on the Drivers tab page, the following is displayed:

  • Qualifications

  • Driver details

  • Notes

Note Note

  • For drivers, who are not defined in master data, only notes are displayed.

  • Only communication data that you have defined in your business partner on the Address tab page under Communication is displayed in the driver details of the freight order. Address-independent communication data is not displayed.

End of the note.

To enter a driver who you have not defined in master data on the Drivers tab page, you need to do the following:

  1. Select the No Master Data Defined checkbox.

  2. Enter a driver description.

How the system sorts and displays drivers on the Overview tab page depends on the locations to which you have assigned these drivers.

More Information

For more information about using drivers in manual planning, see Use of Drivers in Planning.