TM in SAP S/4HANA 2023: Normalized Quantities in E...

Michael_Haase · ‎10-16-2023

Dear friends of TM,

Normalized quantities are commonly used to facilitate the communication between business partners of a transport e.g, when it comes to the available space on a vehicle and the respective settlement.

Imagine, one business partner calculates his transport capacity based on euro pallets and another one with any other type of pallet (e.g. the 'Düsseldorfer'). To avoid confusion or misunderstandings, in many cases either the euro pallet and/or the loading meter is used when talking about transport capacities. Thereby, there's commonly a fixed conversion factor used, meaning the equivalent to a loading meter is 0,4 euro pallets.

In TM embedded in SAP S/4HANA we already offer the possibility to maintain a normalized quantity and an alternative normalized quantity on the vehicle type and on the vehicle resource. This could be euro pallet or loading meter, but it could also be any other dimension.

The new feature with SAP S/4HANA 2023 is now that the conversion factor between a normalized quantity and an alternative normalized quantity can be maintained an considered in the maintenance of equipment and resource. And more importantly, that this feature can be used in the follow-on processes, like the transport planning.

In this blog post, the respective maintenance at the equipment and the resource is explained.

Equipment vs. Resource

Let's start by quickly explaining the difference between equipment and resource…the vehicle type is a type of equipment and is maintained in customizing. E.g. it's a special type of truck with all its characteristics as the physical properties. The vehicle resource is a particular truck which inherits the attributes of the associated vehicle type but has its individual characteristics as e.g. the license plate. The capacity planning can then be done either on the level of the vehicle resource or the vehicle type.

So, the normalized quantities might likely be maintained already at the vehicle type, but not necessarily.

Maintenance in Equipment Type

At the vehicle type, the normalized quantities with its alternatives can be maintained here:

In former releases, it was only possible to maintain units of measure which are without dimension (entries in table T006 with DIMID = 'AAAADL'). Frankly spoken, this check wasn't precise enough in the context of normalized quantities.

Now that we use the full capabilities of normalized quantities, we've refined the check by referring to the customizing setting where the relevance of units of measures regarding normalized quantities and their alternatives is defined:

Here, you see a second setting for the conversion factor between a normalized quantity and its alternatives. This conversion factor is considered in the maintenance at the vehicle type by calculating the alternative number of units if only the number of units are provided and vice versa. And if both are provided, it's checked whether the numbers follow this conversion factor.

Maintenance in Resource

At the vehicle resource, the normalized quantities along with their alternatives are maintained here:

The capabilities and checks are the same as at the vehicle type.

So, I hope this brings some light how the normalized quantities can be maintained in TM.

Any feedback is appreciated!

Best regards,

Michael