Lesson Duration: 45 Minutes
Lesson Overview
As supply chain or network is made up of several different nodes, potentially acting alone or working together. In this lesson you will examine how the nodes of a supply chain can be connected in order to model and support transportation planning.
Lesson Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
• Describe the use of a transportation network in SAP TM optimization.
• Outline the use of transportation lanes and transportation zones
• Explain the use of means of transport
• Create a transportation network
Business Example
John is an SAP transportation consultant working with his client ABC company.
ABC company is implementing SAP TM and will be using the TM optimization function. John must assist the ABC company project team in creating a transportation network that will be used in the SAP TM Optimization function.
Figure 48: Overview of the Transportation Network:
Master data is needed to prepare the system for the operational aspects of
conducting business. Master data is most cases will not be created by the end user.
During operaitons, power users might add new master data objects like products, and locations, according to a pre-defined process.
Figure 49: Locations in the Transportation Network
If a plant, customer, or vendor is transferred and a transportation zone is maintained for this object, then during the transfer to the SCM system:
• The plant, customer, or supplier location is created
• The plant, customer, or supplier location is assigned to the transportation zone in the SAP TM-relevant hierarchy.
As stated before, ERP master data is transferred to SAP TM via the APO Core Interface (CIF). Based on different Customizing entries, master data elements from ERP are reflected in TM as locations with different types. As these locations are created, ageocoder determines the geographical coordinates (longitude and latitude) from a given address. These coordinates are used to determine distances between locations.
Note: The geocoding program supplied by SAP determines the longitude and latitude based on the country and region codes.
There are several companies who provide geocoding products:
Rand-McNally, PC-Miler, and PTV (Karlsruhe, Germany).
In an ERP system that is processing sales orders, situations arise when an order is take for a new customer that is a one time transaction. Transporation will have to be planned and this could cause a large amount of master data that will quickly become obolsete. One-time-ship-to locations can be created in two ways:
• Manually by the user in the forwarding order user interface.
• Automatically by the system based on the address data of an incoming transportation request to SAP TM.
As a result temporary location is created in SAP TM that can later be deleted in batch. An existing business partner (for example, shipper or consignee) is needed to make the association of the new address. The deletion of
one-time-ship-to locations is included in the reorganization job for locations. This batch job checks for the existence of orders for this location. Only when there are no more orders, for example, sales orders, deliveries, or shipments, is this location deleted. The report for deleting locations is /SAPAPO/DELETE_LOCATIONS.
Figure 50: Transshipment Locations
Transshipment locations are used for unloading goods from one vehicle resource and loading them onto another vehicle resource during the transportation process: This function is necessary when different means of transport or different transportation service providers (carriers) have to be used to execute a transportation process, for example:
• Truck – ocean – truck
• Truck – rail – truck
Transshipment locations may also be used when consolidating or de-consolidating goods to be transported.
SAP TM planning supports parallel transshipment locations (hubs).
Figure 51: Transportation Zones
Transportation zones can group locations (customers, vendors) as well as other zones.
One-time locations are also included in transportation zones.
Zones are included with their locations and sub-zones.
Example: All locations that are supplied by the same warehouse are grouped into a transportation zone.
The following zone types are possible:
• Direct Zone – locations are assigned directly to a zone
• Postal Code Zone – specified by a postal code or postal code range
• Region Zone – specified by a country or region, for example, the state of Florida in the US
• Mixed Zone – a combination of the three other zone types.
If SAP ERP integration is used, then the transportation zones are automatically created from the address of the location (for example, customers, vendors, shipping points), and the location is automatically assigned to the transportation zone. Transportation zones group locations and other zones.
Figure 52: Transportation Zone - Hierarchies
You can define the SAP TM-relevant hierarchy in Customizing: TM IMG:
Transportation Management → Transportation Network → Define Transportation Zone Hierarchy
Zones can include locations and other zones.
The following conditions apply when you define a transportation zone hierarchy:
• You cannot assign a transportation zone to itself.
• You cannot assign a transportation zone to another zone if the former already contains the other zone.
A means of transport can represent refrigerated trucks with a specific cost structure and geographic availability. Examples of MTrs: ship, aircraft, truck (15 to.), truck (25 to.).
Vehicles belonging to an MTr that are flagged as “Own means of transport” can have a depot location. Depending on he Customizing settings, the optimizer will make sure the resource starts and ends at this depot location within one optimization run. To use the own means of transport function, you have to set the indicator in the means of transport and assign a location to the resource master data.
For planning, a planned freight order always starts at the depot location (independent of the indicator on the MTr).On completion of the freight order planned by the optimizer, the vehicle must always return to the depot location (if the indicator on the MTR is set).
Figure 54: Transportation Lanes (1) Lanes have a validity period.
Figure 55: Transportation Lanes (2)
A transportation lane points only in one direction. To model the reverse direction, you need to create a separate transportation lane.
Information assigned to a lane:
• Source/origin and target/destination location
• Means of transport – Validity
– Distance / duration – Costs
– Carrier selection settings
• Carrier
– Business partner – Transportation costs – Priority
– Continuous move
Figure 56: Distance/Duration Calculation
SAP TM computes the runtime lanes during optimization. Corresponding transportation lanes are generated between all locations assigned to the transportation zones. In the process, the cost information is taken from the transportation lanes maintained. The distance/duration is calculated according to the settings or taken from the transportation lane maintained.
The maintained distance in the master lane includes a factor for road/street map variability. The factor is obtained from the means of transport. This factor establishes the proportion between the linear distance between two locations and the actual distance covered by the vehicle transporting goods between them.
Included in the means of transport is the average speed of the transport method.
The runtime distance is divided by the average speed to calculate the estimated duration.
Figure 57: Distance and Duration Calculation for 8.0
You determine whether the MOT is calculated by a GIS system by setting the corresponding indicator in the means of transport. If the indicator is not set, the aerial distance is used.
If the GIS indicator is set then the low, medium, high average speed is used. GIS systems typically categorize streets by “slow”, “medium”, or “fast”.
Optional Slide to explain geocoding concept
There are different use cases for GIS:
• Geocoding (determine coordinates from an address for a location): This can be performed automatically when changing the address data of a location, or in background with a report.
• Distance and duration determination between two locations: For performance reasons, distances and durations are stored in a buffer table in TM. This buffer table can be filled in batch mode with a pre-calculation report. If a distance and duration is not in the buffer table when required, it is determined via GIS integration and stored in the buffer. This could be the case with one-time locations, for example.
• Route determination
• Map display: Map display is provided via SAP Visual Business.
– With TM 8.0, the integration to GIS tools can be done without the Internet Graphics Server (IGS). This prevents single calls to GIS, for example.
The new GIS capability provides the following additional flexibility when integrating with GIS data providers like Navteq, ESRI ,and others:
1. Option to use different providers per country
2. Option to use different providers per means of transport.
The integration with GIS providers is a project activity that SAP supports with cookbooks and examples.