The use of freight services levels

A Freight Service Level, or simply service level, is an entity that is used to express the duration of transportation, for example, delivery within twelve hours or round the clock express.

Freight service levels are added to freight orders, freight order lines, and shipments in the following ways:

  • Through freight order types. A Freight Service Level is one of the default attributes of a Freight Order Type.
  • Through items. In the Items - Freight Management (fmfmd1100m000) session, you can define a Freight Service Level for an item. If the item for which a Time Unit is defined is entered on a freight order line, the Freight Service Level is also added.
  • From originating orders. Freight service levels are added to the following types of originating order lines: sales order lines, sales quotation lines, and purchase order lines.
  • Manually.

A Freight Service Level can be used for the following purposes:

  • Freight order grouping
  • Rough planning
  • Determining freight rates
  • Transport lead time calculation

More details about these purposes are provided in the following sections.

Freight order grouping

You can group items by ship-from or ship-to business partner if the items are always transported from or to one particular business partner. You can add a freight service level to any combination of item and ship-from or ship-to business partner in the Items - Ship-from/to Business Partner (fmfmd2100m000) session. As a result, if an item is put on a freight order line, the business partner and the freight service level are automatically added.

To use freight service levels for basic planning, you can include freight service levels in the plan matrix of a planning group in the Plan Matrix (fmfoc1120m000) session. As a result, freight order lines with matching freight service levels are grouped into the same planning group.

Rough planning

You can also use freight service levels as selection criteria for rough planning in the Generate Rough Planning (fmrpg1200m000) session, if you include a range of freight service levels in the rough planning selection.

To determine freight rates

A freight service level is one of the factors that determine the freight rates to calculate the transportation costs of items listed on:

  • Freight order lines
  • Sales order lines
  • Quotation lines
  • Loads
  • Shipments
  • Freight order clusters

The faster the delivery, the higher the freight rate. The Pricing module maintains freight rates for a combination of attributes, one of which is the freight service level. When Freight calculates the freight costs of an order, a load, or a shipment, the appropriate rates are retrieved from the Pricing module.

Transport lead time calculation

When you create an originating order, you can calculate the transportation lead time of the items on the order. Freight service levels can be used as factors in this lead time calculation process.

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