Creating Locations

A location is a logical or physical place where products or resources are managed on a quantity basis.

• Products or freight units are transported between various locations.
• Each product or freight unit has a source and destination location.
• Products or freight units may transit through multiple locations along their journey.
• Products or freight units are loaded and unloaded at these locations.

In transportation processes, a source location, a destination location, and any necessary transshipment locations must be designated to complete the transportation process. A name identifies each location. To define a location, its name and type must be specified. In Transportation Management (TM), the location type is used to categorize locations. Location types are not used to control business processes but serve as a reference. TM provides standard location types, such as:

• Production plant (1001)
• Distribution center (1002)
• Shipping point (1003)
• Transportation zone (1005)
• Business Partner (1021)
• Terminal (1030)
• Store (1040)
• Port (1100)
• Airport (1110)
• Railway station (1120)
• Container freight station (1130)
• Hub (1140)
• Gateway (1150)
• Container yard (1160)
• Warehouse (1170)
• Carrier warehouse (1180)
• Loading point (1200)

Any locations that do not need to be stored permanently in the system as master data can be stored as one-time locations. A one-time location is stored as a transient master data object in the system. These are used in business processes that require the input of locations not defined as master data objects, such as the creation of forwarding orders. The system creates one-time locations based on one-time address details.

A one-time location is characterized by the organization’s name, address data, communication data, or a combination. A note can be created for each one-time location, with only one note per location and language.

A business partner can have multiple standard and delivery addresses and requires one valid standard address at any time. In TM, multiple locations can be assigned to a single business partner. A corresponding location can be created for each relevant address. The address number of the location matches that of the business partner. When TM receives a sales document or outbound delivery, it uses the address data to determine the correct location, taking into account the validity dates of the address.

Report /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATION can be utilized to create new locations for plants, shipping points, and business partners. This is particularly helpful for managing many entities requiring locations.

To execute the report, selections are made from plants, shipping points, and business partners. Options are available to create locations solely for the entities' standard addresses or for the standard and delivery addresses. The report identifies all selected entities that lack a location, and the system performs the following actions:

• Creates a location using the entity's existing address.
• Calculates geocodes.
• Creates a transportation zone location if necessary.
• Updates the location to zone assignment.

When creating or updating documents relevant to Transportation Management (TM), the system verifies the presence of all necessary locations representing plants, shipping points, and business partners. If a required location has not been created, the system will automatically generate it. Locations can be created on demand from the following TM-relevant business document categories:

• SD Documents: Sales Order (SO)
• MM Documents: Purchase Order (PO), Stock Transfer Order (STO)
• Deliveries: Outbound Deliveries, Inbound Deliveries