| Piece units used in load building and loading capacity
checksIn 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: - 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.
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. - 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.
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. 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. - Repeat steps 2-5 for any other items to which you want to link
piece units.
- In the Transport Means Groups (fmfmd0150m000) session, select the transport means group to which you want to link the piece
unit.
- Piece Unit field of the Transport Means Groups (fmfmd0150m000) session, select the piece unit that you want to
link to the item.
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. Repeat steps 7-9 for any other transport means group to
which you want to link piece units.
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