Performing Interactive Planning

Manual planning is done in the transportation cockpit. Manual planning allows you to manually create or change a transportation plan. To create a transportation plan, you assign requirement documents, for example freight units (FUs), to capacities, for example vehicle resources. The system creates capacity documents, for example freight orders (FOs), which you can process further. For example, you can assign drivers to your FOs or perform load planning. If you assign FUs to a container, for example, a container unit is created that you can directly assign to a freight booking.

Planning strategies determine the steps that the system is to carry out during the planning process and the order in which it does so. In the planning profile, you can specify which planning strategy you want to use. The following are a few manual planning strategies:

• VSRI_DEF for manual planning

• VSS_EMBED for embedded. This strategy does not consider scheduling constrains defined in customizing

• VSRI_SCH for manual planning with subsequent scheduling

• VSRI_1STEP for manual planning with carrier selection

Drag and Drop FO Creation:

A FO can be created using the drag-and-drop functionality. Dragging an unplanned FU stage to a resource or dragging a resource to an unplanned FU stage creates a FO. Changes to existing documents can also be made using drag and drop. It is possible to drag extra FU stages to a FO. FUs can be assigned from one freight document to another. Blank capacity documents can be created (that is, capacity documents that do not contain a FU), which you can then process later. It is possible to drag and drop between various hierarchy levels.

The main drag and drop functionalities are as follows:

• Change the relative stop sequence of a FO or transportation unit
• Reassign the stop to a different vehicle, FO, or transportation unit
• Reschedule a FO or transportation unit
• Assign a FO or transportation unit to a resource (truck or trailer)

Manual planning can be done with multiple windows. The transportation cockpit can be deployed in multiple windows on up to three screens.

• Run the transportation cockpit on multiple windows. Select a separate layout for each screen.
• Drag and drop from any list/hierarchy in one window to any other list/hierarchy.
• Actions triggered from the global toolbar (for example, undo, redo, assign selected items, update map, or optimization) consider selected objects from all windows.
• A change in one window automatically updates the other windows.

Command Line Freight Order (FO) Creation: The command line enables mouse-free planning and is an alternative to drag-and-drop planning. Using the command line, the planner instructs the system to assign freight unit (FU) stages to vehicles via a single character string.

To enable command line planning, an index is assigned to each resource and FU stage. The index acts as a unique identifier for every object in the transportation cockpit. Note that vehicle resources are assigned low numbers so that the planner can easily remember them.

Planning with the Command Line: When planning with the command line, the planner first enters index numbers that represent the FU unit stages, followed by a dash (-) and a vehicle resource index. Press Enter, and a FO is created with the relevant stages and resources assigned. Multiple commands can be specified in one string by using a plus (+) sign to separate them.

Example: Simple Planning of FUs on a Vehicle Resource

The FUs that you want to plan have the indexes 5, 6, and 7. The vehicle resource that you want to use to transport the FUs has an index of 2. To assign the FUs to the vehicle resource, you enter the following command in the command line: 5 6 7 — 2.

The following are prerequisites for using command line planning:

• The display of the command line must be activated for the page layout for the transportation cockpit.
• The index field should be displayed for the FU stages and vehicles in the transportation cockpit.

The help field of the command line provides additional information. Choose More Field Help in the context menu for the field by clicking the right mouse button.

Interactive Map Freight Order (FO) Creation: FOs can be created using the interactive map. Freight unit (FU) stages and vehicles are both displayed on the map.

You can carry out your planning activities on the map. If you select Unplanned Freight Units and Start Planning from the context menu, for example, the system shows the possible assignments of the FUs to the resources. Select the assignments that you require.

You can also assign unplanned FUs or multirelations that contain unplanned FUs to resources by using drag and drop. When you do so, you can either assign the FUs to the resource or the resource to the FU.

If you want to split a stage that is displayed on the map, you can assign an unplanned FU or multirelation to a location using drag and drop. Once you have selected the required planning option, the system adds the selected location to the FU unit stage and updates the map accordingly. This process also applies to FOs.

You can also display transshipment locations that are not part of your planning activities. You can display these locations by choosing Show Related Transshipment Locations from the context menu.

If a FO does not have a vehicle assigned to it, you can also assign the vehicle using drag and drop. To do so, you assign the FO to a single vehicle resource or a multispot that contains at least one vehicle resource or passive vehicle resource. Then select the relevant planning option from the menu.

The system displays all of your transportation planning activities on the map. When you leave the full display of the map, your planning activities are also displayed in the table view of the transportation cockpit.

Interactive Planning on the Map: You can carry out your planning on the map.

• If you select Unplanned Freight Units and Start Planning from the context menu, for example, the system shows the possible assignments of the FUs to the resources. Select the assignments that you require.
• You can also assign unplanned FUs or multirelations that contain unplanned FUs to resources by using drag and drop. When you do so, you can either assign the FUs to the resource or the resource to the FUs. You can use the proximity search in the context menu to find unplanned FUs and transportation units that are within a specific radius of a resource or a location.
• If you want to split a stage that is displayed on the map, you can assign an unplanned FU or multirelation to a location using drag and drop. Once you have selected the required planning option, the system adds the selected location to the FU stage and updates the map accordingly. This process also applies to FOs.
• You can also display transshipment locations that are not part of your currently selected planning activities. You can display these locations by choosing Show Assigned Transshipment Locations from the context menu.
• In the context menu for a FU, you can add locations.
• If a FO does not have a vehicle assigned to it, you can also assign the vehicle by using drag and drop. To do so, you assign the FO to a single vehicle resource or a multispot that contains at least one vehicle resource or passive vehicle resource. Then select the relevant planning option from the menu. You can use the proximity search in the context menu to find available resources that are within a specific radius. You can also specify the exact position of a resource at any time in the context menu of the map.
• In the case of resources on the map, you can find the assigned business documents by selecting the corresponding option from the context menu for the resource. The system searches for already planned FOs and adds these to the map.
• You can use the context menu of the map to display different colors for multiple business documents selected simultaneously. This enables you to better differentiate between the documents. The color of each respective document is displayed in the Color column in the document list.
• The system displays all of your transportation planning activities on the map. When you leave the display of the map, your planning activities are also displayed in the table view of the transportation cockpit.

Using a Gantt chart, which is often used in project planning as well, helps to visualize the availability of resources and the sequential order of transports. The Gantt chart is fully integrated into the transportation cockpit.

In the Gantt chart, freight orders (FOs) and vehicle resources are displayed as a time bar and planners can manually plan transports by using drag and drop. The Gantt chart is a screen area in the transportation cockpit, which can be enabled in a page layout for transportation cockpits. All standard functionalities, like positioning the Gantt chart anywhere on the transportation cockpit or maximizing the screen area to full screen, are available for the Gantt chart too.

A zoom bar on top of the screen area can zoom in and out to see a more detailed view of a day or week, or a more general view of the year.

An important factor for transportation planning is the utilization of a vehicle. The utilization of the vehicle can be displayed with the utilization view, which can be enabled when needed. The utilization view shows the utilization of the vehicle over time in a graph. The graph is displayed in a detailed line below the actual resource or document. In this case, the single-view is chosen. This enables the user to see all of the execution information within one screen. Multiple loading acts are only displayed as one item in the Gantt chart. This keeps the chart clean and easy to understand.

Interactive planning can be performed in the Gantt chart using drag and drop. Unplanned FOs can be assigned to resources. Likewise, resources can be assigned to FOs. The FO is dropped on the time bar of the resource. If the FO is not dropped at the same date it was originally planned, the date where it was dropped is taken over into the FO. Scheduling is only performed when requested using the Scheduling button on top of the Gantt chart. The dual-view can be selected to have the unplanned FOs displayed on top and the available resources below. This enables the user to work with one window to plan FOs. The dual-view can be either displayed horizontally or vertically. The size of each area can be changed by dragging with the mouse.

The Gantt chart enables the planning of unplanned FOs by dragging on vehicle resources, as well as the creation of transportation units. When dragging and dropping the loading activity of one FO into the time bar of another FO, both FOs are combined.

Overlap means that the resource was planned multiple times and is therefore not executable. For example, if the trailer is already planned and newly planned in a later step, this can cause an overlap, which the user gets displayed as a red line.

Similar to the utilization view, an overlap view shows if several documents on a resource overlap. This overlap can be overcome by scheduling the resource.