Introducing load building

Load building is the core functionality of Freight. The primary purpose of load building is to plan the transportation of goods from your warehouse to the customer, from your supplier to your warehouse, or from a supplier directly to your customer, in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. Alternatively, you can employ this functionality for goods movements between your warehouses, or from warehouse to production environment and vice versa.

Freight orders

Load building is based on freight orders. To plan the transportation of a particular number of goods, you must select the freight orders and freight order lines on which these goods are listed and start up the load building engine. The result is a load plan for the selected freight orders and freight order lines that consists of a number of loads and shipments.

Planning methods and planning options

The load building engine offers various planning options and three basic Planning methods.

You can create various load plans from the same freight orders, each time using a different planning method and/or different planning options, to see which method or options provide the best result.

Setup

To optimize planning results, set up your master data along the following lines:

Make sure carriers are entered for freight orders during freight order creation (both manually and automatically).
Define appropriate master data, such as addresses, transport means groups, route plans, and so on.
Define carriers and transport means groups with specified transport categories.
Define carriers and transport categories for standard routes and route plans.

In this way, you prevent the load building engine from selecting undesirable carrier or transport means group combinations, such as transport by ship where you need trucks.

Create required capacity overviews

Before you start load building, you can generate required loading capacity overviews for a given period of time. Required capacity overviews are based on the aggregated volumes and weights listed on freight orders existing in LN over a time span specified by the user. Required capacity overviews can help you, for example, to anticipate sudden rises in required loading capacity.

To generate general capacity overviews, open the Generate Rough Planning (fmrpg1200m000) session.

Plan Board (fmlbd0215m000)

In addition to the Generate Plan (fmlbd0280m000) session, you can use the Plan Board (fmlbd0215m000) session to create load plans. The Plan Board (fmlbd0215m000) session provides an intuitive graphical interface that you can use to create and maintain load plans.

You can access the Plan Board (fmlbd0215m000) session from the appropriate menu of these sessions:

Plans (fmlbd0110m000)
Loads (fmlbd4100m000)
Freight Orders (fmfoc2100m000)
Freight Order Lines (fmfoc2101m000)
Freight Order Lines to Be Replanned (fmlbd0120m000)

For more information, refer to To create load plans using the Graphical Plan Board (fmlbd0215m000)

Load Plan Gantt Chart (fmlbd0710m000)

The Load Plan Gantt Chart (fmlbd0710m000) session is used to generate a timeline overview of selected loads and shipments as well as a resource capacity overview.

Hand over the load plan to Warehouse Management

After you create a load plan, the load plan must be carried out. This means that the goods must be collected in the warehouse and loaded onto a truck or other vehicle on the date and time specified in the load plan, or, in case of incoming goods, receipt procedures must be started up.

The normal procedure to carry out a load plan is to pass on the load plan to Warehousing. To pass on a load plan to Warehousing, you must make the load plan actual. The load plan then obtains the Actual status. For further information on load and shipment handling in Warehousing, see Shipments and loads.

Note: In direct delivery scenarios, however, warehouses and Warehousing are not involved. For further information, see To use Freight Management for direct deliveries.

Planning data and warehouse updates

If you are primarily interested in planning data such as loading and unloading dates, routes, and freight costs, you can use manually created freight orders to perform Freight load building on a stand-alone basis.

If you require warehouse processing updates in addition to planning and freight cost data, to create load plans, you must use freight orders that are based on originating orders.

The reason is, that Warehousing needs warehousing orders to process the loads and shipments and to update Freight on the progress, but in LN, you cannot create warehousing orders for manually created freight orders.

A warehouse order is generated when the originating order of a freight order is released to Warehousing. Manually created freight orders have no originating orders, and therefore, these orders cannot be released to Warehousing.

Similarly, loads and shipments based on freight orders, whose originating orders are not released to Warehousing, cannot be processed in Warehousing.

Load plan, load, and shipment statuses

In Warehousing, the progress of load plan processing is expressed in various statuses. This process-progress information is passed on from Warehousing to Freight. Freight, in turn, checks this information and displays its own statuses to express the various stages of completion of loads, shipments, and freight orders. For more information, refer to Load plan, load, and shipment statuses and Freight order statuses.

Note: For direct deliveries, warehouses and Warehousing are not involved. Freight orders based on direct delivery sales orders and purchase orders are only updated from Order Management. For direct deliveries, the full freight planning functionality is available. For more information, refer to To use Freight Management for direct deliveries.