Creating Freight Units

The freight unit is the smallest unit that can be transported. The predecessor document data and the freight unit building rules form the basis for building freight units. You define the most important settings for the freight unit in the freight unit type.

Predecessor documents can be forwarding orders, sales order, delivery, order-based transportation requirements, or delivery-based transportation requirements. For embedded TM deployment, the sales order or forwarding order is the predecessor document. For side-by-side deployment, OTR/DTR and forwarding orders are the predecessor documents.

An N:N relationship is possible between the freight unit and its predecessor documents. The following figure is applicable for the embedded environment. The same applies for the side-by-side scenario. Freight units can be further deleted, split, merged based on settings defined in the freight unit type customization.

The following are the configuration settings for freight unit type:

Change Controller Settings: You can assign several different settings related to the change controller. These settings impact how TM responds to changes made to the freight unit and freight order.

Additional Strategies: There are various extra strategies:

• Creation Strategy: Specifies tasks that the change controller is to perform when creating a freight order, freight booking, and freight unit.
• Save Strategy: Specifies tasks that the change controller is to perform when saving a freight order, freight booking, and freight unit.
• Delete Strategy: Specifies tasks that the change controller is to perform when a freight order, freight booking, or freight unit is deleted or canceled.

Execution Settings: There are various execution settings:

• Execution Track Relevance: Indicator for controlling the tracking of documents. To track certain types of documents, choose 2 (Execution Tracking) or 3 (Execution Tracking with External Event Management). The system sets the initial document execution status to Not Started. If you do not want to track certain types of documents, choose 1 (No Execution Tracking). The system then sets the initial document execution status to Not Relevant.
• Immediate Processing checkbox.

Planning Settings:

• Planning profile: Planning profile can be assigned to a freight unit type for freight order planning.
• Rule for pick up/delivery windows: Time windows can be specified for pickup and delivery of goods. If the condition is not defined, then rule is considered.
• Condition for pickup and window determination window: Condition /SCMTMS/TOR_TIMEWIND can be assigned to the freight unit type based on this condition. The following four dates and times for pickup and delivery are calculated for source and destination based on information derived from the sales order, forwarding quotation, OTR, DTR:
  • Acceptable start date and time
  • Requested start date and time
  • Requested end date and time
  • Acceptable end date and time

Event Management Settings:

• Application Object Type: Type of application object to be tracked on the application system necessary for determining event management relevance for an application object. The event manager only processes event messages for these objects.
• Last Expected Event for Execution of a Document: The last expected event for a document, for example, the unexpected event Unload End.

Default MTr Definition Settings:

• Default MTr for Type: Indicate the default means of transport type
• Condition for Default MTr

Default Units of Measure:

• Weight
• Volume

Direct Shipment Options:

• Direct Shipment Option Type: There are three standard options, which include no determination of direct shipment options, automatic determination of direct shipment options, and manual determination of direct shipment options.
• Carrier Selection Settings: Indicates carrier selection settings that are used for the determination of direct shipment options.
• Carrier Selection Conditions: Specifies the condition that the system uses to determine carrier selection settings for direct shipment processes at runtime.
• Direct Shipment Strategy: Specifies the process controller strategy that can be used to determine the direct shipment options for a freight unit.

Freight Order Determination:

• Freight Order Type: Default freight order type for direct shipment.
• Freight Order Type Condition: Condition can be created to decide which freight order type is used for direct shipment.

Organizational Unit Determination:

• Default Org Unit: Execution Organization, Purchasing Organization, Execution Group, Purchase Group. These are the organization numbers that are created in Organizational Structures.
• Consider the Organization Unit of User checkbox: Considers the organizational unit assigned to the user that creates the freight unit in the determination of the organizational unit responsible for the freight unit.
• Condition of Determination Rules: Conditions can be created to affect the organizational unit determination.

Additional Settings:

Track Changes checkbox: Select this box if changes are to be tracked.

Freight unit building rules define how freight units are built. The system determines which freight unit building rule (FUBR) is taken into account for the business document during planning. The following are the three FUBR determination options:

1. The system checks the condition defined in the logistics integration profile. If there is no condition or the condition cannot determine a result, the system moves to the second option.
2. The system checks if a FUBR has been maintained in the logistics integration profile. If no FUBR is maintained, the system moves to the third option.
3. The system applies to standard settings.

When creating freight units, the system first groups all delivery items within the following parameters:

• Hard constraints for source / destination location and pickup / delivery dates
• Business document attributes and packaging information
• Incompatibilities

Freight units are created automatically if transportation-relevance is determined for the transportation demand (sales order, purchase order, delivery, forwarding order, OTR, DTR).

The system considers freight units that already exist for the transportation demand. It creates freight units depending on the split quantity and the checkbox for the item split allowed. The system considers these entries when creating multiple freight units. You can use strategies to create freight units in accordance with your own requirements. SAP delivers the standard strategy FUB_AUTO for freight unit building.

Within the FUBR, you must specify the critical quantity. This parameter defines the primary unit of measure that allows a line item on a transport requirement to be split into multiple freight units. Besides that, several planning quantities can be defined, for example, weight and volume. Every planning quantity is considered for capacity checks of resources during transportation planning, and every planning quantity is copied to the freight unit.

The split quantities define the maximum capacity of a freight unit. The system calculates the freight unit as a multiple of the rounding quantity. If Item Split Allowed is selected, the freight unit splits the item while it is being built, if it is over the split quantity. The process controller strategy allows you to use strategies to define the way in which freight units are created, in accordance with your requirements. If you maintain an equipment type in the FUBR, the capacity of the equipment is considered during freight unit building and the items consolidated into one freight unit are loaded into the equipment.

If necessary, companies can define that the freight units are split if certain constraints are present. For example, you define the maximum capacity of a freight unit using the split quantity. Let's say, you have to transport five tons of cement, but you can only transport it in batches of 500 kg. In this case, you define a split quantity of 500 kg and the system generates 10 freight units.

Based on the definition of freight units, all items included in a freight order are transported together from their source to their final destination. However, in multimodal scenarios, different planners are involved in scheduling the different stages of the transport. For this reason, stage information can be added to the freight unit. This allows a degree of independence when scheduling the stages.

Using the process controller, freight unit building can be adjusted to customer-specific requirements using ABAP coding.

Freight Unit Building Rule