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Welcome to our blog post for the SAP EWM Podcast Episode 23 – Get your goods ready for a trip with the SAP Route!
You can listen to the podcast episode in English and in German on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts or Sway! Enjoy!
The idea of a route!
A route basically describes a defined path of a journey or of a trip. When companies ship goods, they also send them on a journey. To make this journey as efficient, cost saving, safe and fast as possible it is necessary to find the right route.
This blog post is about the route in SAP and which processes are affected by the route. We also discuss the differences between routes in SAP ERP and SAP EWM and about the integration of SAP Transportation Management.
The Route in SAP ERP
Let’s first clarify the idea of a route or route determination in SAP. The route is about clarifying what is to be transported - how - where from and where to.
Let's make an example: We get a customer order and the customer wants to have the goods tomorrow. This means that the goods must be picked and shipped promptly. It is necessary to create an express order in our SAP system with a corresponding shipping condition. Let's pick up on the four questions again:
What - this are the ordered goods that have transport requirements due to their characteristics - e.g. bulky goods can only be transported by freight forwarder.
How - this describes the shipping condition, e.g. “by twelve o'clock tomorrow” or in other words - express delivery.
Where from - our warehouse.
Where to - this is the customer's shipping address.
Based on these information, we can now start planning the journey for our goods that means we can determine a route in SAP based on the master data and defined rules.
The transportation costs are then also calculated from the route - we all know this when we privately select “Express shipping” in the webshop, for example. In this case, the transportation costs can be determined directly from the route. The route also determines the means of transport and the involved stages. It also influences the order scheduling that means when can we deliver with regard to how long does it take to transport the goods to their destination. This transportation lead time can be used to carry out backward scheduling to determine when goods need to be loaded in order to meet the desired delivery date.
Different sales order items can also have different routes if, for example, bulky goods and small parts are in one order but it could be that we send them out differently for example the small parts with a parcel service provider and the bulky goods with a freight forwarder.
It is important to say that the route is not real transportation planning, as the route is only determined at item level and does not carry out any cross-item or cross-order planning. That only happens during transportation planning.
Let's have a closer look to important terms which were already mentioned:
Shipping condition - describes the “General shipping strategy for goods to deliver them from the supplier to the customer for example ‘Standard’ or ‘Express shipping’ strategy. The shipping condition can be maintained directly in the customer master data and is then used for sales order creation or it can be linked to the order type.
Shipping type - specifies the means of transport used for transportation for example ship by truck, rail, ship or plane.
Transportation group - summarizes the properties that are important for shipping the goods. For example, it can indicate properties such as “liquid” or “to be transported cooled”. The transportation group is also maintained in the material master since it describes material characteristics.
Means of transport - describes a grouping of resources for example cool-trucks, 40-ton trucks or 20-feet containers.
Means of transport type - groups together different means of transport that are of the same type for example all available trucks are assigned to the means of transport type “Truck” which can be a 40-ton truck or a cooled truck.
Route determination for sales order items uses order header data and material master data. The shipping country and the destination country or the corresponding regions as well as the shipping condition come from the order header. The transportation group is taken from the material master of the corresponding item. As mentioned before customers could have different priorities for different sales order items and therefore different shipping conditions can be relevant and it is also possible to determine different routes for different order items.
During outbound delivery creation a new route determination takes place. And this determination also considers the delivery weight in addition. Because the delivery contains all the goods which are shipped together and therefore the relevant shipping weight is now available and can influence of course also the route determination.
The route in the outbound delivery is now a header information. That means that there is at least a separate outbound delivery for each route. The delivery then uses the characteristics of the route like transit time or transportation lead time to plan the shipping.
There are also many companies who work with regional freight forwarders. The route in SAP ERM is often used in that case to group deliveries according to regions. Companies then define, for example, the northern route, the west route, the south route and so on. If, for example, a shipper uses a specific forwarder for domestic transport from its distribution center to all cities in the western region, the shipper can define receiving zones for route determination for example all cities in US that begin with zip code 9. The receiving zones can then be used to find specific routes and the corresponding freight forwarders via the route.
Everything we have discussed so far is known as “SD route” or “LE-TRA route”. Both terms are used, but they mean the same SAP object!
The SCM-Route in SAP EWM
First of all: Route determination in EWM is independent of route determination in ERP! That means there are different determination frameworks, different route objects and there is also no distribution of the ERP master data SD route to EWM! The Supply Chain Management route (SCM-Route) in EWM is a completely independent object! And it can of course make sense to carry out another route determination in the warehouse management system, that means in EWM. Just think about the weight or quantity which may have changed because certain products cannot be delivered as desired.
But EWM can also work with the SD route. The SD route is send to EWM within the outbound delivery and additional information such as the times from scheduling as “planned goods issue “ is also available in the EWM outbound delivery. Customers can decide via configuration in EWM which route they want to use.
How is the SCM-Route determined in EWM?
The SCM route is determined with the so called “Routing Guide”! The determination logic is very similar to ERP. The routing guide uses:
- Ship-from location and Ship-to location
- Shipping condition
- Transportation group
This is more or less the same as for the SD route determination.
In addition, the determination in EWM can check whether the SCM-Route is suitable for dangerous goods. Therefore the dangerous goods master data in EH&S is used. There are also other criteria that can be taken into account for the determination:
- Minimum or maximum weight or volume per item or per delivery
- Maximum length/width/height of the products
The SCM-Route determination is therefore more granular than the SD-Route determination and therefore it allows a more specific planning. In addition, transportation costs can be taken into account in the determination that means the most cost-effective route can be determined.
The determination takes place automatically when the EWM outbound delivery order is created and it can also be manually triggered later. In EWM there is only one route field in the EWM delivery order header, so there can only be one route and customer can decide via configuration if they want to use the SD-Route or the SCM-Route.
What is the route actually used for in EWM – independent if it’s the SD or SCM route?
The route can be used for example for wave determination. All deliveries of certain routes can be grouped into the same waves. And the route also influences scheduling, because the route is used to determine the time at which the delivery should leave the warehouse for example via the departure calendar of the SCM Route.
The route can also be used in EWM to plan EWM transportation units. For this purpose, there is a report in EWM where the route can be used as a main selection criteria.
The route can also be used in consolidation group determination, e.g. to determine which deliveries can be packed together. And the route can also be taken into account in packaging planning and the route can then be used to determine special work centers as part of work center determination. The creation of pick orders can also be influenced by the route.
Another important point is staging zone determination, which can be influenced by the route. This allows deliveries on certain routes to be directed to specially designated zones. The creation of an invoice before goods issue can also be activated for certain routes. And in loading, the route can be used to check whether unplanned loading is permitted on an existing shipment in EWM.
Example: Let's assume we have received a customer order and we have determined a route that specifies shipping via a certain parcel service provider and tomorrow is the desired delivery date. We have swap bodies at dedicated warehouse doors for this parcel service provider which are picked up by the service provider at fixed times.
Based on this information we can find an appropriate wave via the route and the planned goods issue time of the delivery item ensures that we find a wave which is picked, packed, staged and loaded according to the desired delivery date. After picking, the packages are moved to workstations that are specially equipped for parcel shipping. The appropriate staging zone and the door where the swap bodies are waiting are determined based on the route. All determinations happen completely automatically in the background and ensure a smooth delivery in time.
It is easy to see that the route is an object that has major influence on the shipping processes in SAP EWM. The route in EWM takes over dispatch control if no explicit transportation planning takes place.
SAP EWM uses the SCM route since the beginning. However, in 2016 it was not initially adopted into EWM on S/4HANA. Since the release S/4HANA 2021, the SCM Route is now also available in EWM on S/4HANA - both embedded and decentralized.
The SCM route is also used as part of the Global ATP (Available-to-Promise), which takes place in SAP APO. It provides information on transportation and therefore enables a more precise delivery date commitment. And that is why we talk about the SCM route and not the EWM route, because it is historically an SCM object and is still used by other SCM modules too.
Transportation Cross-Docking is based on the SCM-Route
Transportation cross-docking is one of the planned cross-docking scenarios in SAP EWM. With transportation cross docking, the ordered goods do not go directly from the initial warehouse to the end customer, but they are routed via one or more intermediate locations without having to be repacked there. Reason for the process may be, for example, that several deliveries are consolidated, the goods are processed centrally for export or the means of transportation is simply changed.
In case of a customer order, the initial EWM managed warehouse which ships the goods receives the outbound delivery to the customer. EWM then carries out a route determination and EWM finds a SCM-Route which is transportation cross-docking relevant and together with the route an intermediate warehouse location is determined - the so-called cross-docking warehouse.
The location of the interim warehouse becomes the actual ship-to-party of the outbound delivery in EWM and the original final customer becomes the final-ship-to-party of the delivery. Follow-up documents for cross-docking are then automatically created in SAP ERP with the goods issue posting of the initial outbound delivery. The follow up documents are an inbound delivery for the cross-docking warehouse and an outbound delivery from the cross-docking warehouse to the final goods recipient. Both deliveries know each other and they are distributed as a delivery couple to the EWM-managed cross-docking warehouse. These special deliveries are marked as Cross Docking delivers and they can trigger special cross-docking or consolidation processes in EWM.
There is also a separate transportation cross-docking monitor in SAP ERP that you can use to monitor the progress of the cross-docking process. Transportation cross-docking is not only for sales orders but can also be used for stock transport orders too. The trigger is the SCM route determination in the initial warehouse which has to be managed by SAP EWM.
How do the route and transport planning fit together?
At SAP there are two solutions that we can use to plan and manage transportation. SAP Transportation Management and LE-TRA. LE-TRA stands for Logistics Execution Transportation.
SAP Transportation Management is SAP's strategic solution for this topic. LE-TRA as compatibility scope in S/4HANA can only be used in SAP S/4HANA until the end of 2030. The SD-Route or LE-TRA-Route in ERP is not affected by the end of the usage rights and can be used in order documents and delivery documents even after 2030! (see SAP Note 2270199)
Shipment planning with LE-TRA
If LE-TRA is used, the route can be used for example as a selection criteria during shipment creation. Transportation planners can select all non-assigned outbound deliveries with a specific route to combine them into one shipment. Using the LE-TRA shipment as a bracket for outbound deliveries in order to process them together, print delivery documents etc. is certainly one of the most common use cases of SAP customers.
The route can then be transferred from the deliveries to the shipment header as shipment route (LE-TRA-Route). As mentioned at the beginning, the route also defines the means of transport for example by truck, rail, ship or plane. - and the route can be also be used for transportation scheduling that means how long will the shipment take including administrative effort and so on. And the route can also be used to calculate transportation costs for the shipment.
Transportation Management with SAP TM
In SAP TM the route object no longer exists. In TM there is the so-called “Standard or default route”, but this has nothing to do with the SD-Route or SCM-Route. It’s only a simplification of transportation planning in TM: In short, the simplification is - that the optimizer does not always have to be triggered to perform simple planning. Among other things, the default route is used for sales order scheduling for example.
Sales order scheduling supports the delivery date determination in the ERP sales order. It is comparable to the determination via the SD-Route. However sales order scheduling uses information from SAP Transportation Management which offers for example a better forecast of the required transportation times or it is necessary for customers who only use SAP TM and no SD-Routes for example.
Sales order scheduling with SAP TM is based on strong communication between SAP ERP and SAP TM. First, backward scheduling is performed in SAP TM starting from the requested delivery date in order to determine the pick date or availability date of the goods. If the availability check (the ATP in ERP) cannot confirm this date, SAP TM now determines a new possible delivery date via forward scheduling - based on the committed material availability.
This feature shows perfectly the strength of SAP: the deep and native integration of different SAP modules. In this case SAP Sales Distribution, the available to promise and SAP Transportation management in order to determine the most reliable delivery promise for customers.
As mentioned above SAP TM follows a different approach compared to LE-TRA and it works with locations, transportation zones, stages and so on. And the various transportation demands or freight units are then turned into one or more freight orders with start and destination locations in TM, which are approached in a specific sequence. This planning can be done manually or with the help of the TM optimizer. There are also schedules and much much more in SAP TM. As you can see from the explanation, the route no longer plays a role in TM.
The planning results are for example freight orders with start and destination locations. These freight orders are the objects which are used for the TM-EWM integration. This means that SAP EWM does not receive any further routes from the TM system but rather a freight order with assigned delivery items, time information, carrier information, loading sequence and so on.
What are the consequences for warehouse planning and operations?
If a freight order exists in SAP TM and this freight order is send to the warehouse, EWM can now control many processes based on the freight order instead of using the route. Processes like wave determination, warehouse operations scheduling or staging zone and door determination can be done with regard to the transport instead of the route.
And this is independent of the used integration scenario between EWM and SAP TM – that means it works with the classic EWM-TM integration using Transportation Units and also with Advanced Shipping and Receiving where EWM works directly on the TM freight order.
Conclusion
The route in SAP Logistics is an important tool to control shipping processes in SAP ERP as well as in SAP EWM. With the native integration of SAP Transportation Management and SAP Extended Warehouse Management there are new possibilities to manage the shipping of goods based on freight orders.
Please visit our SAP EWM Podcast Landing Page with all Episodes, Blog Posts and Podcast Notes!
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