First/last delivery

[former_member538960]

Is there a way of forcing the VSR optimizer to deliver to certain locations before others in a freight order? Or is there a way of ensuring certain locations are always delivered last?

[former_member194808]

Dear Joseph,

For sure there is ways to influence this, just to mention a few:

• You can work with acceptable times in the Freight units, these are hard constraints
• You can work with requested times in the Freight units and work with penalty costs for earliness/Lateness, these are soft constraints
• You can work with default routes/schedules
• You can maintain opening hours on locations

Maybe also interesting to view the requirement from a business perspective. How much are the transportation costs if there aren't any constraints(the optimizer calculates the most efficient route) and how much are the transportation costs if we take constraints into account(e.g. a specific customer must always receive of goods between 7.00 and 8.00)

With kind regards,

Benno Mateman

[former_member538960]

That's certainly how we were thinking of going for the deliveries that need to be delivered first, as it's really about them needing them at certain times. Unfortunately that doesn't work for ensuring certain locations are delivered last, as that's about needing the trailer to be empty, as we use it to send some things the back the other way. I've thought about creating the returning items as their own demand, but they can be returned to any of our distribution centers so there's no concrete delivery location for them.

[former_member194808]

Dear Joseph, If it considers only the last delivery you might try incompatibilities. Maybe it works to make an incompatility for the transportation group "packaging materials"(if this is what consignee returns) and "finished goods", so they cannot be together in a truck. I don't know if the optimizer is smart enough to recognize this and plans the return cargo(which also has got a delivery) as a last stage.

However I fully understand your requirement where you want to evaluate the costs of extra (un)loading activities (over multiple next stops) against the costs of the extra miles to be driven. A far as I know this functionality is currently not available in TM.

[former_member538960]

One of the problems is that the packaging we're returning can be returned back to any of our distribution centers, depending on which one is most convenient. But as far as I can see transportation requirements have to have one specific destination location.

[former_member194808]

Dear Joseph,

I don't think the 'complex' scenario's you describe are fully supported by SAP TM(in the SAP TM 9.0/9.1 book, the one with the trucks on the cover,they speak in chapter 13.3 about a retail scenario(maybe this is what you need), but they mention it is not supported by standard SAP), I also have not seen any standard scenario which you can use a reference point, the curent standard SAP TM scenario's are more suitable for shippers and LSP's than for carriers. Here some last suggestions/rough ideas/inspiration(so you have to try out yourself it will work) but maybe it a better idea to get some support from SAP.

1. If the incompatibility was working(indeed you need seperate FU and a FU needs a source and a destination location, as far as I know it cannot be determined dynamically, which is your requirment) maybe you can try to enter dummy destination location(e.g. headquarters of company to which the package belongs)in the FU. You can design hubs where the packaging goes to. You can let the optimizer decide which stages the FU is going to get. So the FU will get the stages from customer to hub and from hub to dummy location), the last stage can be defined as not relevant for transportation(this can be defined in movementtype)
2. Create every location 2 times? Once as a delivery location, once as a pick-up location?
3. Create 2 transportation zones(can the pick up location be assigned to a specific hub(collection point)? One for delivery and one for pick-up?
4. A combination of point 2 and 3

As mentioned before just very rough ideas, if you found a solution please share with community what it is!