Defining Transportation Documents

This video introduces the topics covered in this unit. Please watch the video for a high level overview, or dive straight into the topic in the lesson below.

Various business documents are relevant to planning, each with a specific purpose. These documents can be interconnected in different ways. Demand documents and their stages can be assigned to capacity documents. A capacity document can represent the transportation of one or multiple demand stages.

While a freight unit solely represents demand, freight orders and freight bookings represent pure capacities. Other documents can represent both demand and capacity simultaneously. Pure capacity documents and consignment orders can be subcontracted and serve as the foundation for execution. They may be created in advance to reserve a carrier's transportation capacity, which is then utilized by assigning demands.

The documents serve the following business purposes:

	Freight unit	A freight unit represents an original transportation demand abstracting from forwarding orders, sales orders, or deliveries. It is transported through the complete transportation chain without splitting it on any transportation stage. As a pure demand, a freight unit consumes capacity.
	Package unit	Package units represent demands transported together in the same packages, such as a pallet or carton.
	Consignment order	A consignment order represents a logical grouping of one or multiple transportation demands with the same source and destination but doesn’t represent a physical capacity. A consignment order contains only one stage. It’s frequently used in communication, for example, for advanced shipping notifications between shippers and consignees, and can also be used for subcontracting purposes. Consignment orders can represent a demand but also consolidate demands.
	Container unit	A container unit models a demand transported in a container. You can consolidate multiple freight units into a container unit, which serves as capacity from the freight unit viewpoint. However, the container also represents a demand that must be transported. In an intermodal container transportation scenario from China to Europe, the container may have three stages assigned to a road freight order for pre-carriage within China, an ocean freight booking for the main carriage, and another road freight order for the subsequent carriage in Europe.
	Trailer unit	A trailer unit represents trailer demands transported by a road freight order.
	Railcar unit	Railcar units represent railcar demands transported by a rail freight order.
	Road freight order	Road freight orders represent transportation by road, which can be subcontracted or executed by a company’s fleet. This document represents a capacity and can consolidate multiple demands that consume the capacity.
	Rail freight order	In the same way as the road freight order, a rail freight order represents transportation by rail.
	Ocean freight booking	Ocean freight bookings represent subcontracted ocean transports. Like freight orders, a booking can consolidate multiple demands.
	Air freight booking	Like ocean freight bookings, an air freight booking represents transportation by airplane.

Assigning Transportation Documents: (Descriptions refer to the figure above)

Box 1: Freight units and package units can be assigned to the documents in boxes 2 and 3.

Box 2: Consignment orders and container units can be assigned to all capacity documents shown in box 3, except for consignment orders, which don’t allow the assignment to ocean and air freight bookings.

Box 3: While trailer and railcar units are specifically dedicated to the corresponding road or rail mode of transport, container units frequently involve multiple modes of transport across the different container unit stages. Freight orders represent the movements of trucks and locomotives. Freight bookings represent the subcontracted movement of vessels or airplanes. Without freight orders and freight bookings, neither freight nor transportation units can be transported. However, freight orders can represent transportation without transportation units and freight units; these represent empty moves, which may make sense in certain circumstances, although you usually attempt to avoid them.