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SAP Learning Journey

Introducing External Transportation Planning

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

Explain the external transportation planning process

External Transportation Planning Process (3EP, 5VV, 5XC)

Overview of the External Transportation Planning Process

In this lesson, you will explore the Order-Based Transportation Consolidation process. This process supports transportation execution and monitoring in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition in connection with a decentralized transportation management system. The order-based transportation consolidation process comes in three flavours depending on the type of order that initiates the transportation process. In an outbound scenario, the starting point is a sales order (scope item 3EP). In the inbound scenario, the starting point is a purchase order (scope item 5VV) and in the replenishment scenario, the starting point in a stock transport order (scope item 5XC). These processes / scope items are very similar to the respective processes / scope items for manual transportation planning. The key difference in all three processes / scope items is: Transportation planning is done in an external transportation management/planning system and NOT in the transportation cockpit in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

Within these scope items the planning process is not supported within SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, but within a de-central TM system. For this purpose, freight units are sent to the de-central TM system. There, freight units that can be combined - for example, in a delivery tour - are consolidated into freight orders. Freight orders are created in the external planning process. In addition, the freight orders are scheduled in the de-central TM system, that is the sequence of locations that a resource (for example, a truck or railcar) has to visit to pick up and deliver freight units is determined as well as the dates/times of each visit. The planning result of the de-central TM system, that is the freight order and its assignment of freight units, is then returned to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition to create the freight order also there.

The de-central TM system can be a third-party TM system or an SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition system. In the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, the transportation planner creates a freight order and assigns the freight unit received from the SAP S/HANA Cloud, public edition system. Additionally, they assign a carrier to the freight order to execute the transportation of the goods. As soon as the transportation planner is done with the planning activities, they save the freight order. The freight order is automatically replicated to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system for further processing. The minimum required process steps in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition system are described with scope item 4OZ.

Order-based Transportation Consolidation - Outbound (3EP)

See the following video to learn more about the order-based transportation consolidation - outbound process.

Order-Based Transportation Consolidation - Inbound (5VV)

See the following video to learn more about the order-based transportation consolidation - inbound process.

Stock Transport Order-Based Transportation Consolidation (5XC)

See the following video to learn more about the stock transport order-based transportation consolidation process.

External Transportation Planning (6W1)

The external transportation planning process can be based on several base processes depending on whether your intention is to plan outbound, inbound or intra-company transportation.

The following base processes are supported.

Depending on the base process certain business condition have to be me in order to initiate the transportation process. These can be the creation of a sales order in the Sell from Stock (BD9) process or the creation of the purchase order in the Direct Procurement with Inbound Delivery (2TX) process.

Business Conditions for External Transportation Planning

Base Process	Business Condition
Sell from Stock (BD9)	Create a sales order
Sales Scheduling Agreements (3NR)	Generate the planning delivery schedule
Direct Procurement with Inbound Delivery (2TX)	Create a purchase order
Stock Transfer with Delivery (BME)	Create a stock transport order

The external transportation planning process supports the modes of transport road and rail. The process is performed by a user with role Dispatcher (TM) and uses the Manage Freight Units and Manage Freight Orders apps.

The external transportation planning process consists of four steps that are independent from the base process and the mode of transport that you need to use. The first step is to review freight unit details. Optionally freight units can also be checked in the list view of the Manage Freight Units app. Freight units can be filtered by various criteria. The dispatcher may want to focus on blocked freight units only at this stage of the process. A prerequisite to this step is that freight units must have been created based on any of the base processes from a predecessor document (e.g. sales order, purchase order). Freight units are sent to an axternal system in this process. There, they are planned. That means, freight orders are created, freight units are assigned to them. Freight orders are subcontracted and finally set to Ready for Transportation Execution.

When freight orders have been planned in the external system, the dispatcher is responsible for reviewing that transportation charges are correctly calculated, and costs are distributed. Charge calculation and cost distribution are executed automatically right after the freight orders are received from the external transportation management system. The final step is to trigger the creation of the delivery. This can be done for individual or multiple freight orders in the Manage Freight Orders app or via a scheduled batch job in the background.

From a transportation process perspective, the transportation process continues with scope item 6W2 (Transportation Execution) while the next process step in the base processes is typically the picking of the delivery.

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