Piece units used in load building and loading capacity checks

In addition to various other criteria, Freight uses the following types of units to perform load building and rough planning:

  • piece units
  • Units of measure: Surface area, weight, and/or volume
  • A combination of piece units and units of measure

To plan transportation, many types of logistics providers prefer piece units such as pallets, boxes, or so-called loading meters, sometimes without wanting to be bothered with the volume, surface area, or even weight of the goods involved.

For example, a carrier specialized in palletized transport will often be interested in capacity details expressed in pallet places or loading meters, whereas a carrier with a tanker fleet will mainly be interested in volumes. Most bulk carriers, on the other hand, prefer weights. Combinations of unit types, such as piece unit and weight, are also used in various logistics environments.

To use piece units, they are allocated to items and transport means groups. If you link a piece unit to an item, you can only use transport means groups with identical piece units or piece units related through conversion factors to perform load building or rough planning. The use of piece units is optional, use them if your logistics environment requires you to do so.

Setup

In the Freight Master Data Parameters (fmfmd0100m000) session, you can define default units of measure for Freight. To define piece units for load building and rough planning, proceed as follows:

  1. In the Units (tcmcs0101m000) session, define the required piece units. If you use various piece units that are to be used in the same loads and shipments, make sure that you define conversion factors between the piece units. For example, if you define piece units such as pallets and boxes and a pallet must contain a given number of boxes, define conversion factors for the boxes and the pallets. For further information, see Defining units and To use conversion factors.

  2. In the Items - Freight Management (fmfmd1100m000) session, select the item to which you want to link the piece unit.

    Note that in the Items - Freight Defaults (fmfmd1101m000) session, you can also link a default piece unit to items of particular item types that belong to particular item groups.

  3. In the Piece Unit field of the Items - Freight Management (fmfmd1100m000) session, select the piece unit that you want to link to the item. After you select the piece unit, the Pieces field becomes available. Note that a conversion factor between the inventory unit of the item and the piece unit must exist.

  4. In the Pieces field, enter the portion of the piece unit taken up by one item. For example, if the piece unit is a box that can contain 10 items, enter 0.1 The Units per Piece field will show the reverse proportion, that is, 10 instead of 0.1.

  5. If required, to indicate that other units are not used in load building and rough planning for the item, do not change the default value 0 in the other item dimension fields of the Items - Freight Management (fmfmd1100m000) session.

    Make sure that this does not conflict with the Cost Allocation Based On parameter. For example, if the value is 0 for the weight unit and cost allocation is based on weight, cost allocation is not available for the current item. Therefore, if you are only using piece units, to enable cost allocation you must set the Cost Allocation Based On parameter to Distance.

  6. Repeat steps 2-5 for any other items to which you want to link piece units.
  7. In the Transport Means Groups (fmfmd0150m000) session, select the transport means group to which you want to link the piece unit.
  8. Piece Unit field of the Transport Means Groups (fmfmd0150m000) session, select the piece unit that you want to link to the item.

  9. In the Capacity in Pieces field, enter the number of piece units that an individual means of transport of the selected transport means group can contain.

    As a result, the transport means group is available to perform load building and rough planning based on the selected units, that is, to create load plans and capacity reports for items that have the same units as the transport means group, or items that have units for which conversion factors with the transport means group's units are defined.

  10. Repeat steps 7-9 for any other transport means group to which you want to link piece units.

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