We are proud to announce that today we have released Feature Package FP03 for S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition 2023. This brings many new innovations for Transportation Management.
In this article I will talk about the most important innovations in TM.
First, let us take a look at the
AI Enhancements.
As you may already know from the announcements made for FPS02, we have made significant investments in AI-based features. With this feature package, we are now enhancing AI-based goods receipt analysis.
AI-assisted Goods Receipt Analysis also supports Shipment Documents with multiple deliveries and nested hierarchy structures.
Extraction of data from the shipping document
This means that you can now scan the shipping documents that accompany truck deliveries, analyze the documents, compare them to data already in your system, and create consignment orders with that data. This new feature detects multiple deliveries as well as deep packaging hierarchies.
If there is a mismatch, it is automatically detected and you can respond with error handling to correct the erroneous data in your consignment document.
Innovations for Advanced Shipping and Receiving
In the area of Adv. S&R we have three new innovations. The most important of them is:
GTS-Integration in Decentral TM/EWM for Advanced Shipping and Receiving
In a system landscape where the Advanced Shipping and Receiving Process is performed in a decentralized TM/EWM environment, SAP Global Trade Services can now be integrated for the export scenario. In this process, the compliance check in GTS can be triggered based on the freight unit or freight order. This can be done manually or the process can be fully automated.
Architectural Overview of GTS-Integration in Decentral TM/EWM & Process Flow
In addition, after loading in EWM, the export declaration can be triggered in GTS. The creation of the customs invoice can be included in this process with a completely new message choreography.
The second topic in the context of Adv. S&R is the weight/volume update of outbound delivery order items for unpacked products. With this enhancement, it is now possible to update the weight and volume information of unpacked products, such as bulk products that are weighted in EWM, and send it to TM.
Last but not least in the context of Adv. S&R is the ability to synchronize predecessor documents for Rail Freight Orders. With this enhancement, it's possible to directly update predecessor documents such as the freight unit or inbound delivery with different quantities (more or less of a product quantity or packages).
Further Enhancements in the Freight Document Execution
Further enhancements are available for multimodal processes in the air and in the ocean,
- Automatically Set CU to Loaded on a Road Freight Order. This process enhancement makes it possible to automatically set a container unit to loaded at the latest when the truck is checked out at the loading location. This reduces the number of manual steps required.
- Unassign, assign a container unit of a pick-up freight orders & Improved display of handling execution status in the overview tab for freight bookings. To further simplify document handling in multi-modal scenarios, new actions have been introduced. These new actions make assigning and unassigning container units to pick-up freight orders more efficient. New actions for deleting containers in a freight order are also available.
- There is also an enhancement available in the TORGenericRequest_In service. With this enhancement, the carrier can now update header changes as well as actual departure dates/times.
Planning & Network Enhancements
A solution that many of you may have been waiting for is a new, innovative, and straightforward way to determine the carrier in a freight unit, consignment order, or freight order. This innovation greatly simplifies the carrier determination process by allowing a simple set of rules to be defined to find the right carrier. To do this, a new carrier determination profile has been introduced where simple criteria such as source and destination locations can be used to select the carrier. This new profile can be integrated with Excel for easier maintenance and a simulation report is also available.
The new profile can be assigned to order types.
Carrier determination in a freight order
This new feature is processed, for example, when a freight unit is created or data is changed. Or when a user manually creates a freight order, for example with the function 'Create Capacity Document based on groups'.
The carrier can be inherited from the previous document, or it can be created from scratch if the previous documents do not contain a carrier. Along with this new feature, mass change capabilities for the carrier are also introduced in the Transportation Cockpit. I think this really a awesome new feature.
There are also several other enhancements in Planning & Network. I'll mention just a few of them here.
Consideration of split breaks: A nice enhancement to driver time constraints is a topic that is defined in the EU driver regulations. According to these rules, breaks can be further split.
Another helpful feature introduced in embedded scheduling is that it avoids short loading or driving times before calendar breaks like weekends or non-working days.
Avoidance of activities prior to non-working days
These enhancements allow for more compact scheduling results and improved resource and driver utilization.
With this feature package, we are also improving the manual load planning capabilities. Specifically for 3D load planning, a new toolbar configuration is introduced that allows you to define which manual load planning actions should be displayed. Manual planning is also further supported with additional usability features such as better item selection (e.g. select all of the same stack, ...) and better item positioning (e.g. align, swap, mirror, lift up&down, ...). This helps the planner to use 3D load planning more efficiently.
Customized Toolbar with new actions for manual planning in 3D load planning
Another important feature is that street-level routing on the map now takes into account the departure time of the document stage. This means that time is now used on the map for more accurate routing.
Not to forget the performance improvements for the VSR Optimizer. These performance improvements are significant and you can find more information in this blog.
There are also a number of enhancements in the area of
ERP document integration
Let us first talk about 3 smaller topics in this area:
There will be a report available to activate ERP documents (MM/SD/LE) for integration with TM. This report is very helpful when TM is used for the first time and existing documents need to be activated for TM integration. Instead of having to manually find and modify documents to make them relevant for TM integration, these documents can now be easily activated by a report.
Another useful feature is the switch for the integration of Purchase Scheduling Agreements (PSAs). Various reports can be used to stop the integration of PSAs, deactivate or reactivate documents and, for example, trigger or deactivate nJIT SPCs.
Very often it is necessary to check if the components of a component group are dangerous goods. Therefore, a DG check on component group level is required. To achieve this, a new BAdI is introduced to pass the component for a classic Dangerous Goods check (PS&S). If the check for any component is positive, the component group header is marked as dangerous goods.
Integration of nJIT S2C Outbound Deliveries in TM
As with the integration of nJIT for inbound deliveries in FP2, we now offer the integration of nJIT for outbound deliveries. As in the inbound case, the logistically relevant product is the component group material. This means that the freight unit in TM is created at the component group level. The Advanced Shipping Notification can be sent with additional information such as slot number and JIT call reference.
Integration of nJIT Outbound delivery to TM
With FP02, we have introduced functionality in Freight Unit Building and Planning based on any unit of measure. Charging and settlement now also support any UoM at the product level.
This means that scale bases, calculation bases, rate tables, and agreements can now work with dimensionless units such as meters or pieces.
Usage of any Unit of Measurement in charge calculation
This was the latest and greatest of Transportation Management in S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition 2023 FP03.
S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition 2025 is already in the works. You can be curious about what will be delivered later this year. You can always get a preview of what is planned in the Roadmap Explorer.
Further information can be found here:
- What’s New Viewer
- SAP TM Product Page on sap.com
- SAP Community for Transportation Management
- SAP Transportation Management Group on LinkedIn
Thanks to the author Eric Osterroth
