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Transportation Zones as grouping element for Locations are used to define the SAP TM Transportation Network in a more efficient manner by making pure location definitions obsolete. For example the definition of Transportation Lanes or Trade Lanes using Transportation Zones automatically breaks down to each covered Location - Location combination.

But why do Transportation Zones have geo-coordinates and where do they come from?

Why?

When creating a Transportation Lane, a distance between start and destination is automatically determined by the system (of course not possible for Intra-Zone Lanes, where on definition level start and destination is equal). To be able to do this, geo-coordinates are required for start and destination. When the Transportation Lane was enhanced to also enable definitions for Transportation Zones a few years back, it was required to give zones a coordinate to enable distance determination. Note that for the optimization use case this distance only becomes relevant in case you fix it on lane level. Otherwise the system will always determine the distances for each location pair included. The second reason why it is required is the display of Transportation Zones on the SAP TM Geo-Map using SAP Visual Business. Obviously there you need the information where to position the zone icon.

How are the coordinates determined?

The system determines all Locations included by the zone and calculates the center coordinate. Of course in very dynamic scenarios having many one-time locations this can vary. The coordinate can nevertheless be overwritten manually in the zone maintenance.

How can I find out?

To find out Transportation Zone with missing coordinates, select all Transportation Zones in the Transportation Network Cockpit. All zones not having valid coordinates are display at the zero coordinate somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

The other way is the report mentioned below.

How can I trigger coordinate calculation?

There are currently two ways to do that:

Report /SAPAPO/TZ_COORD_CALC_TM. It displays all zones and indicates if a coordinate exists. A mass determination for all (selected) zones is possible.

Second option is to directly get the coordinate in the Transportation Zone maintenance. Select one or mutliple zones and press the button 'Calculate Coordinates'.

Note that depending on the master data scenario it can take some time to finalize the calculation as it not only includes the caluclation itself, but also the determination of included locations for each zones using a dynamic address check. 

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