In the area of transportation master data, you can define the following in business process configuration.
- Define equipment groups and equipment types
Equipment groups and equipment types are used to represent transportation capacity. The information maintained for the different equipment groups and types are used later in the process in the freight order to determine tare weight, gross weight, or utilization of freight orders.
One type of equipment groups are vehicle groups. The vehicle group defines the class of transport. Available vehicle groups include STR for road/truck transport or SA / ST to represent railcars. For each vehicle group, you can define several vehicle types to represent vehicles of different size, for example, large trucks or small trucks. For each vehicle type, you can maintain the following parameters:
- Description
- Capacity
- Payload weight
- Cubic capacity
- Interior length / width / height
- Alternative quantities like pallet count or loading meters
- Physical properties
- Tare weight
- Max gross weight
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- CO2 emissions (empty)
- CO2 emissions (full)
The second equipment group are container groups. Container group SCN includes the standard container types like 22G0, 42G0, 42G1 and others. Each container type defines the physical properties and capacity.
- Define 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 TM, the material freight group is transferred from the sales order item to the product item of the freight unit. You can use material freight groups in the process of freight unit building to differentiate per material freight group how freight units shall be created.
- Define UoM relevance for NLQ and ALQ and conversion between NLQ and ALQ UoM
Transportation demands and capacities are frequently measured in normalized floor space in trucks, which is used for planning, charge calculation, subcontracting, execution, and settlement purposes. To enable such measurements, you can define a unit of measure (NLQ=normalized load quantity) for pallet spaces (for example EPL) and another UoM (ALQ=additional normalized load quantity) for loading meters (for example LDM) and how they are converted into each other.
The consumption of transport capacity for your materials in these dimensions are either defined as alternative quantity for the unit of measure of the NLQ in your material master (Create Material or Change Material app) or you have specified an individual NLQ per product or reference product in the Define Normalized Quantity app.
- Define standard carrier alpha codes
This configuration activity allows you to define standard carrier alpha codes (SCAC). The SCAC is a unique two-digit to four-digit code used to identify carriers.
- Define UN/LOCODE
This configuration activity allows you to define United Nations Codes for Trade and Transport Locations (UN/LOCODES.)
- Define Airport Codes
This configuration activity allows you to define airport codes used in air freight bookings. Airport codes are 3-letter codes, that uniquely define an airport.
- Define Location Calendar
This configuration step allows you to define a location calendar for a specific country or region using a factory calendar. 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 nonworking day. This enables you to charge your customers with extra charges for providing services on nonworking days.
- Define Commodity Codes
The remaining configuration activities deal with the definition of commodity code lists for different countries and transportation modes. Commodity codes are a set of classification codes used in the global marketplace to identify goods and services.
You can define numbering schemes for commodity codes and define the mode of transport for which the numbering scheme is relevant. Numbering scheme content can be assigned a validity in order to adapt the numbering scheme, if it changes its length, for example from 6 to 7 characters from a specific date. If the freight unit is not created for a specific transportation mode it will show the commodity codes for all modes, whereas the transportation orders (road freight order or ocean freight booking) will only show the mode specific code.
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition the Standard Transportation Commodity Code (STCC) numbering scheme is delivered as numbering scheme content. An STCC is a numeric code up to seven digits long representing several commodity groupings. It is used in rail transportation in North America and contains product information that is used to determine rates and is used in waybills and other shipping documents. When using rail transportation in Mexico, USA, or Canada, you use the STCC to create entries for commodity codes. If you want to use a numbering scheme other than STCC, you can define the numbering scheme as part of the configuration.
Subsequently you define commodity codes in the Manage Commodity Codes for Transportation app. The Classify Products - Commodity Codes for Transportation app allows you to assign these commodity codes to products, which will then allow you to show the commodity codes in freight units, freight order, and freight bookings whenever you transport a classified product.