SAP SCM Planning

Where Do Planning Shipment Go?

Shipments to be planned come from SAP ERP, and from SAP ERP the orders go through the Core Interface. These include the following types of confirmed orders:

1. Sales Orders
2. Purchase Orders
3. Returns
4. Stock transport orders
5. Deliveries

Transportation planning and execution is critical to improving inventory management and production efficiencies because transporation is what allows material to arrive at the right time and to the right location (even the right door to the warehouse). Auto manufacturers and others have moved to just in sequence (JIS) which means that the materials must arrive in the sequence which they will be used on the manufacturing line. This places an even larger burden on the quality of transporation planning and vehicle scheduling.

Transportation Lanes

These are  the connections between the locations. The locations + the transportation lanes form the supply network. This network is used by TPVS to plan and schedule shipments. However, the supply network is used by other modules within SCM such as SNP, SPP, and GATP. For a description of transportation lanes see this post.

http://sapplanning.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/transportation-lanes-in-scm/

Resources

TP/VS is based upon vehicle and transport resources, and thus it can be constrained. To see details on resources see this post.

http://sapplanning.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/resources/

How is Transportation Planning Performed?

• Transportation planning can be manual or performed using the optimizer
• Delivery dates can be changed within TP/VS if they are planned from sales orders. This is connected to backorder processing through GATP.
• Planned shipments are then through the CIF and go out of SAP ERP

TPVS Functionality

The functionality  includes:

• Contract Management
• Carrier Tendering
• Optimal Routing
• Shipment Creation

TPVS is not that widely installed, partially because many finished goods manufacturers simply do not understand or focus on transportation planning.  Since they don’t seem to get it, it may be software that could be installed to improve the operations of third party logistics providers, however, they tend to not spend very much money on systems.

Different From TM?

To see how TPVS is different (or the same) as TM, see this post.

http://sapplanning.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/how-tm-isdifferent-from-tpvs/