Configuring Transportation Management

Transportation management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition offers five scope items in the SAP Process Navigator. The core transportation processes are included in the External Transportation Planning, Manual Transportation Planning, Transportation Execution, and Freight Settlement scope items.

These scope items support your company's transportation planning, execution, and monitoring in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. The sales-order-based, purchase-order-based or stock-transport-order-based transportation demand (freight unit) is built considering transportation constraints. It is then planned internally in a transportation cockpit or sent to a decentralized TM system for planning. In the latter case, the planning result (freight order) is received in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition from the decentralized TM system. The charges for transporting the cargo are calculated based on rates maintained in a released freight agreement.

Delivery creation is triggered from the freight order, which is based on the consolidation information. Afterwards the freight order is executed and corresponding statuses are registered in the freight documents. Freight costs are broken down in the freight order. The aggregated freight costs of the order are distributed to the delivery item level based on its gross weight. Upon check-out (in outbound processes) or check-in (in inbound processes), freight orders can be confirmed for accrual posting.

After the confirmation of a freight order for posting, the system automatically posts the freight costs to Financial Accounting for accruals. During the posting process, freight orders can be monitored for any errors during the posting process to resolve them. The invoice received from the carrier is finally verified against the costs calculated in the freight order.

The SAP Process Navigator contains the following solution processes for transportation management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition:

• External transportation planning (6W1)
• Manual transportation planning (6W2)
• Transportation execution (6W3)
• Freight settlement (6W4)
• Determination of geocoordinates, distances and durations (‏46P‏)

Process flow diagrams and test scripts for these best practices can be reviewed and downloaded from the SAP Process Navigator.

1. Navigate to the list of solution processes on the SAP Signavio Process Navigator website. Use the URL SAP Process Navigator and choose Solution Process. You can now see a list of all available solution processes.
2. Using the Search in SAP Signavio Process Navigator field (in the top right corner of the screen), search for solution process 6W2.
3. In the resulting list, select the entry for the current (i.e. the most recent) version of the solution process Manual Transportation Planning (6W2) for solution scenario SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. You can now see the details for the solution process.
4. Choose Accelerators.
5. Choose (for example) Test script to download the test script. Look for any other options/documents available.

Furthermore, it offers the following master data scripts:

• Create freight agreement (3TL)
• Create carrier master (4DE)
• Manage locations (7E9)

Master data scripts can also be reviewed and downloaded from the SAP Process Navigator.

1. Navigate to the list of solution processes on the SAP Signavio Process Navigator website. Use the URL SAP Process Navigator.
2. Navigate to the Accelerators tab.
3. Choose Implementation.
4. Choose Create Your Own Master Data.
5. Enter (for example) ID or Description of the master data script.

Determination of Geocoordinates, Distances and Durations (46P) is a supporting scope item. This scope item allows you to determine geocoordinates for locations, as well as distances and durations for pairs of locations within Transportation Management. This scope item delivers the necessary settings and information to activate the integration between SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP HANA spatial services running on the SAP Business Technology Platform. For more information, see SAP note 3058573 - Integration Note: SAP HANA Spatial Services / SAP Transportation Management.

A master data script Create Carrier Master (4DE) supports you in the creation of business partners with role Carrier in order to enable you to subcontract freight orders to carriers.

Furthermore, a master data script Create Freight Agreements (3TL) supports you in the creation of freight agreements in order to automatically calculate transportation charges and support freight settlement with contracted carriers.

The master data script Manage Locations (7E9) explains how to create locations with different location types (ports, airports) and how to assign UN/LOCODE or (IATA) airport codes to these locations.

The scope items relating to Transportation Management are defined as non-standard scope items. That means, they are not included in the standard content, but need to be activated explicitly. However, they are not license-dependent, which means that they do not require a separate license agreement. Note, that for most localizations, only scope items 6W1, 6W2, 6W3, and 6W4 are available as described in the introduction lesson.

Technically, the configuration can be done in SAP Central Business Configuration (CBC).

To review the configuration of your solution, you can check the configuration activities there. They are categorized into the following areas:

• Master Data for Transportation Management
• Logistics Integration for Transportation Management
• Freight Order Management
• Freight Cost Calculation
• Freight Cost Settlement

In the area of master data for transportation management, there are fourteen configuration activities available, which are optional. The configuration activities in this area relate to the following elements:

• Definition of equipment groups and equipment types

  You can use equipment types when you define the container type of a container item in an ocean freight booking or the vehicle type of a road freight order. Vehicle and container groups and types are specific occurrences of equipment groups and types. You can use equipment groups to group equipment types into categories.

• Definition of material freight groups

  A material freight group is used to group materials. It can be assigned to the material master (under Sales/General Plant Data) and to the sales order item. In Transportation Management, the material freight group is transferred from the sales order item to the product item of the freight unit. Then it is used during freight unit building, for example, to find the freight unit building rule.

• Definition of standard carrier alpha codes

  The Standard Carrier Alpha Code (SCAC) is a unique two-digit to four-digit code used to identify carriers.

• Definition of airport codes and UN/LOCODE

  United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations (UN/LOCODE) is a geographical location code developed and updated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), a sub-organization of the United Nations (UN). Airport codes are 3-letter codes, that uniquely define an airport.

• Definition and activation of numbering schemes and content for commodity codes

  You can define a numbering scheme for a commodity code, for example, Standard Transportation Commodity Code (STCC), that you use for classifying products. You can also define a numbering scheme type, for example, commodity codes for rail or road transportation. These configuration activities allow you to assign the numbering scheme to a numbering scheme content and enter a validity period. You can also assign a numbering scheme for commodity codes to a country or region.

• Definition of location calendars

  During charge calculation, the system uses the country or region of the location and the factory calendar to determine whether the date used for charge calculation is a working day or a non-working day. This enables you to charge your customers additional charges for providing services on non-working days.

• Definition of charge types

  You can create or edit charge types that help the system to assign charge types in calculation sheets and rate tables. Assigning a charge type to a calculation sheet line item or a rate table plays an important role in how the system calculates the transportation charges for that line. When you define charge types, you can make the following settings:

  • Specify whether a charge type can result in a positive or negative value; an independent charge type can't be negative.
  • Specify whether a charge type can be an absolute value or a percentage value.
  • Specify whether the charge type is a dependent charge type when you create a new charge type

  When you define a charge type, you can maintain its description and language. You can also specify or delete a transportation mode and shipping type combination for a charge type. When adding a charge type to a business document (for example, a freight order or freight agreement), the system validates whether the transportation mode and shipping type combination in the configuration for the charge type is the same as the combination of transportation mode and shipping type in the respective business document. If not, the system prevents you from adding the charge type to the business document.

• Definition of dimensional weight profiles

  You can create, update, and delete dimensional weight profiles. The system uses dimensional weight profiles to determine transportation charges. The system calculates the dimensional weight by converting the cargo volume to the appropriate unit of measure and then dividing it by the dimensional weight factor. Common dimensional weight factors for metric units of measure are 5000 (cm3/kg) and 6000 (cm3/kg). Common dimensional weight factors for imperial units of measure are 166 (in3/lb) and 194 (in3/lb).

• Definition of Unit of Measure relevance for normalized load quantities and alternative normalized load quantities and their conversion

  A normalized load quantity is for example the number of pallets. Normalized load quantities are used to describe the capacity of vehicle or container resources, if standard quantities like gross weight or gross volume are inadequate dimensions to measure the capacity and capacity consumption. Think about transporting bottles in cases. For this type of products, it is difficult to define how much gross weight of product or how much gross volume of product fits into a truck, but it is easy to express this number in pallet counts.

In the area of logistics integration for transportation management, there are seven configuration activities:

• Define transportation-relevance of sales documents

  This is probably the most important configuration step. In this configuration step, you can specify whether sales documents are relevant for transportation by assigning a control key. Criteria for the assignment of the control key are as follows:

  • Sales organization
  • Distribution channel
  • Division
  • Sales document type
  • Shipping condition

  The control key determines whether freight units are created for sales documents and the corresponding outbound deliveries. When you create a sales document that is transportation-relevant, the system assigns the control key to the sales document and to all relevant documents in the document flow, for example, the outbound delivery. This is a fixed parameter that can not be changed subsequently in the sales document.

  In addition to the control key, a logistics integration profile is determined for the sales document.

  Follow the demonstration on how to access this configuration step and define transportation relevance for sales documents. Note, that the shipping conditions are used to differentiate, whether a sales order will be relevant for external transportation planning (shipping condition 05) or internal transportation planning (shipping condition 07).

  Note

  Shipping condition 05 is the shipping condition that is delivered as standard best practice customizing for use of transportation management. It is used for internal transportation planning as well as external transportation planning depending on which scope items you have activated in your tenant. In your project you have to define how you want to use a specific shipping condition as part of this configuration to define transportation relevance of sales documents.

  Watch the simulation Business Process Configuration to learn more about the system-related activities.

  ExerciseStart Exercise
• Define Transportation-Relevance of Purchasing Documents and Delivery Documents

  Similar to the previous configuration step, you can specify in these configuration activities whether purchasing documents and delivery documents are relevant for transportation by assigning a control key and logistics integration profile.

  The relevant criteria for purchasing documents are purchasing organization, purchasing group, and order type.

  The relevant criteria for delivery documents are shipping point, delivery type, and shipping condition. Only outbound deliveries are supported for integration into TM, if the preceding order was not already integrated to TM.

• Define Logistics Integration Profile

  For each logistics integration profile, you can define whether you want to plan based on requested or confirmed quantities, and how freight unit building should be done. How freight units are created is controlled by freight unit building rules, which you define in the Manage Freight Unit Building Rules app. The relevant freight unit building rule to be used is either defined here in the logistics integration profile directly, or retrieved via a condition that is assigned to the logistics integration profile.

• Assign SD/MM Text Types to TM Text Types for SO/PO, and Assign Logictics Execution Text Types to TM Text Types for Deliveries

  You define which types of text entered in a Sales and Distribution (SD), Materials Management (MM), or in a Logistics Execution (LE) document are displayed on the Notes tab page of the corresponding freight unit in Transportation Management (TM).

• Define Blocks Based on Delivery Blocks

  In this configuration activity, you define how delivery blocks are handled for specific document types in TM. You can specify whether a delivery block is a planning block, an execution block, or both. Delivery blocks prevent further planning and execution in TM.

In the area of freight order management, there are four configuration activities available, which are optional. The configuration activities in this area relate to:

• Maintenance of Text Schemas

  You can define text types and assign them to the predefined text schemas:

  • SFO_SCHEMA (Freight Order)
  • SFU_SCHEMA (Freight Unit)

  You can also specify an access sequence, which will enable you to copy texts from a preceding document.

• Definition of Number Range Intervals for Freight Order Management

  In this configuration activity, you can check if the number range intervals for freight units and freight orders that have been delivered by SAP (FU and S1) overlap with those that are defined and used in the decentral transportation management system with which TM in SAP S/4HANA Cloud is integrated. To avoid problems in the integration process, the number range intervals must not overlap. If they do, you can adjust them in this activity.

• Definition of Business Transaction Document Type Codes and Item Type Codes

  The settings that you configure here determine how the system handles references between business transaction documents and other documents, for example, when processing B2B messages (both inbound and outbound). You can define your own entries that are then displayed in the search help of the corresponding fields on the user interface of the business documents.

In the area of freight cost calculation, there are two configuration activities. These allow you to define charges profiles, and calculation profiles. You can define the following settings when you create or edit a calculation profile:

• The calculation date type that the system uses as the basis for the rate and agreement validity during charge calculation
• The exchange rate date type that the system uses as the basis for the exchange rates during charge calculation
• The calculation level that the system uses to determine at which level to calculate the charges, for example, at header level
• The currency exchange rate type that the system uses as the basis of the exchange rate during the charge

In the charges profile you assign the calculation profile that you want the system to use when calculating transportation charges for the purchasing organization and the distribution profile you want the system to use to perform cost distribution when distributing costs in a freight order between multiple business partners.

In the area of freight cost settlement there are two configuration activities. These allow you to assign the default plant for company codes and assign MM integration settings for charge types.

You can specify a default plant for a company code. When you post transportation costs, the system creates a service purchase order and a service entry sheet to pass the costs onto Financials. When you have a freight document that combines deliveries out of multiple plants belonging to the same company code, the system needs the default plant information to create the service purchase order item.

The MM integration settings for charge types allow you to assign a valuation class, an account assignment category, and a condition type to independent charge types and a condition type to dependent charge types.

You can enhance the solution with custom fields and custom logic using a no-code/low-code approach. Enhancing business documents with own fields does not require programming. You can enhance freight units, freight orders, and freight bookings on header, item and stage level. Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) are used with low code to add custom logic. The custom logic allows you to perform custom checks, set field properties, set or change values on custom fields. Furthermore, APIs are available to access data from outside the system. You can use APIs to get access to document information, to interact with the system and to subscribe to business events. For freight orders and freight bookings APIs are available for creation, reading, updating and deletion. For freight units there are APIs to read and update. You can subscribe to business events for freight orders, freight bookings, and freight units.

Finally, you can adapt the freight order, freight booking, and freight unit UIs to your needs. On the main UI pages you can change the sequence of tabs and tab titles. Additionally, you can change the content of specific areas, for example the sequence of fields on the UI and field labels.