Defining Freight Units

A freight unit is:

• A set of goods intended to be transported together from origin to destination
• The smallest unit of freight used in transportation planning
• A unit used to merge items (transportation requirements) derived from originating documents (SO, PO, STO, and so on) for the planning of transportation.

The granularity of freight units required for transportation planning varies significantly depending on the business scenario. The system can split and merge product quantities of the requirements when creating freight units, depending on the applied freight unit building rules. The creation of freight units subsequently impacts planning. Larger freight units simplify planning activities in VSR optimization, while smaller freight units theoretically offer higher optimization potential but complicate planning due to their increased number. To achieve optimal planning results, it's recommended to strike a balance.

1. Food Distribution: Consider a truck with a capacity of 20 tons intended for transporting 20 tons of flour in 1 kg packages. Creating a single freight unit of 20 tons or 20,000 freight units of 1 kg each is not advisable for the aforementioned reasons. A balanced approach should be sought.
2. E-commerce Shipments: An e-commerce company needs to transport a mix of electronics, clothing, and home goods. Instead of creating separate freight units for every single item (resulting in a very high number of freight units), or combining everything into one large freight unit (making it cumbersome to handle), it would be more efficient to create freight units grouped by product category or delivery destination.
3. Automotive Industry: A manufacturer needs to deliver a variety of auto parts to different assembly plants. Splitting the freight units based on part types (for example, engine components, body parts, electrical systems) rather than by individual items or as a single freight unit for all parts combined can enhance the efficiency of both transportation and handling at the destination.
4. Pharmaceutical Logistics: A pharmaceutical company requires the transportation of both temperature-sensitive and non-sensitive medications. Creating separate freight units for temperature-sensitive items (such as vaccines) and non-sensitive items (like vitamins) ensures proper handling and compliance with regulations without overwhelming the planning system with too many small units.

Freight units are fundamental to efficient and effective transportation planning and execution. Understanding the importance of freight unit granularity and appropriately configuring systems to manage freight units can significantly streamline logistics operations, balance planning complexities, and optimize transportation resources. By ensuring accuracy in defining and managing freight units, businesses can enhance operational efficiency, minimize costs, and meet specific transportation requirements effectively.

Freight unit building can be either automatically triggered or manually executed. Typically, if freight units should not consolidate items from different predecessor documents, which is the most common scenario, automatic freight unit building can be activated. Freight units are created immediately upon the creation or saving of their predecessor documents. Additionally, the creation of freight units can be triggered by background reports. Specifically, report /SCMTMS/TRQ_PREP_PLNG_BATCH can be utilized to create freight units in a side-by-side deployment scenario. In such cases, freight units are generated based on the /SCMTMS/TRQ object. For an embedded deployment scenario, report /SCMTMS/SUBSEQUENT_FUB_LOGINT should be used.

Manual options are also available for initiating the creation of freight units. This can be done via worklists for any of the possible predecessor documents (Order-based Transportation Requirements (OTR), Delivery-based Transportation Requirements (DTR)).

Freight Unit Building Rules (FUB rules) are essential for determining how freight units are created and managed within a transportation management system. These rules ensure that goods are efficiently grouped for transport, optimizing load capacities and meeting specific business requirements.

There are three options for determining freight unit building rules:

1. Condition Check in Logistics Integration Profile: The system first reviews the condition defined in the logistics integration profile. The system transitions to the next option if no condition is specified or fails to produce a result.
2. Freight Unit Building Rule in Logistics Integration Profile: Next, the system verifies if a freight unit building rule is specified within the logistics integration profile. The system proceeds to the final option if no such rule is maintained.
3. Application of Standard Settings: The system defaults to applying standard settings in the absence of a condition or a specified freight unit building rule.

Freight units are automatically generated when transportation relevance is identified for a transportation demand, such as a sales order, purchase order, delivery, OTR, or DTR.

The system considers any existing freight units associated with the transportation demand. It creates freight units based on the defined split quantity and the status of the item split checkbox. These parameters are considered when multiple freight units need to be created. Custom strategies can be employed to create freight units to meet specific requirements. SAP provides the default strategy, FUB_AUTO, for freight unit building.

Within the freight unit building rule, defining the critical quantity is essential. This parameter specifies the primary unit of measure that enables a line item on a transport requirement to be split into multiple freight units. Additionally, several planning quantities, such as weight and volume, can be defined. Each planning quantity is considered for capacity checks during transportation planning and is copied to the freight unit.

The split quantities set the maximum capacity of a freight unit. The system calculates freight units as multiples of the rounding quantity. If the Item Split Allowed option is selected, the system will split the item during freight unit building if it exceeds the split quantity. The process controller strategy allows customized strategies to define how freight units are created according to specific requirements. When an equipment type is maintained in the freight unit building rule, the capacity of the equipment is considered during freight unit building, and the items consolidated into one freight unit are loaded accordingly.

If necessary, companies can specify that freight units should be split under certain constraints. For example, the maximum capacity of a freight unit is defined using the split quantity. If transporting five tons of cement but limited to batches of 500 kg, the split quantity is set to 500 kg, and the system generates 10 freight units.

Based on the definition of freight units, all items within a freight order are transported together from their source to their final destination. However, in multimodal scenarios, different planners may be involved in scheduling various transport stages. To accommodate this, stage information can be added to the freight unit, providing a degree of independence when scheduling each stage.

The freight unit building rule also considers incompatibilities. For example, certain products cannot be transported together due to differing temperature requirements; ice cream and ketchup must be shipped separately. Consequently, these items must be kept apart during freight unit building, even though other items within the same transportation requirement, such as chocolate ice cream and strawberry ice cream, can be consolidated into a single freight unit. To address such planning constraints, incompatibility settings can be defined and assigned within the freight unit building rule.

Watch the simulation Review Freight Unit Building Rules to display a freight unit building rule and the essential settings required to set up a freight unit building rule.