Global Update of Handling Units

In various industries, goods are picked from an anonymous stock, which means that no handling units are present in the stock, and moved to the staging area. At the staging area, final preparations are carried out to make the goods ready for shipment. Goods are packed in packaging materials such as crates and pallets. In this business scenario, handling units are created automatically during the confirmation of the pick. LN creates handling units based on the packaging definition of the warehouse order outbound line. The packaging definition defaulted at the warehouse order outbound line is usually a packaging definition which is applied for the item or item/business partner combination under normal conditions.

At times there can be shortage of packaging materials. In most cases the shipment of goods cannot wait until the correct packaging materials are available. In practice, alternative packaging materials are used, for example, another type/size of box or another pallet can be used. This means that a new packaging definition must be applied which is different from the one that is applied under normal conditions. The use of alternate packaging material means that the handling unit structure, which is already generated by LN when the pick is confirmed, must be changed.

To suit the needs of your business, LN allows you to do the following:

  • Select an alternate packaging definition

  • Compose a shipment line specific handling unit template (Specific Packaging)

The following options in the Shipment Lines (whinh4131m000) session > appropriate menu > Handling Units allow you to easily replace the packaging materials in the generated handling units:

LN disables both options if the following happens:

  • The Package Definition field in the Shipment Lines (whinh4131m000) session is not of type Variable or empty.

  • The status of the shipment line is not Open.

  • The handling unit does not refer to inventory. The HU linked to the shipment line contains the information about the linked lots. In this scenario, the removal of handling units at shipment line level is not allowed because relevant inventory characteristic information only present at the handling unit linked to the shipment line will be lost. This information is not stored in the shipment line.

  • The Generation of handling unit is not allowed when the following happens:

    • The shipment line is marked as Manual in the Shipment Lines (whinh4131m000) session.
    • The warehouse is WMS controlled.
    • The manual outbound process is not allowed.
    • Handling units must be in use in shipments.
    • The quantity Not Shipped Quantity in Inventory Unit in the Shipment Lines (whinh4131m000) session is greater than zero.
  • You cannot see both the options if you do not select the Handling Units in Use check box in the Master Data Parameters (whwmd0100s000) session.