WKS: How to use Freight Unit stage defined MTR for Freight Document creation

[bernd_dittrich]

On and off the question comes up, what the Means of Transport on Freight Unit stage level means and how it can be used when creating Freight Orders. I try to answer this a bit with this posting.

First of all, what field do we talk about:

The Means of transport can be defined on Freight Unit stage level:

This field is used as a default Means of transport for Freight Documents created by the optimizer, it can be overruled. The means of transport of the freight order can be different, specifically in manual planning.

If you want to use the Freight Unit stage attribute to be applied to the freight order also in cases where the freight document is created manually, this can be achieved with a little config:

1. A Data Crawler Profile is needed which returns for a Freight Order the requirement Stages. I created one as an example:
   
   
   
   1. Path in IMG
   
   
   2. HeaderData:
   
   
   3. Path to be maintained:
   
   
   
   


2. This data crawler profile can now be used in a condition, the condition needs to be defined similar to this one. T
   
   
   
   1. The Condition Type and the Origin of the condition is important. Direct BO-Access Means, that the condition just returns the value it has read with the data access definition, just what we need:
   
   
   2. The Data Access Definition now uses the data crawler profile we just created, we just need to add the field name, which is MTR_TCO in our case (Stands for Means of Transport Type code, if you are interested :-)):
   
   
   3. Condition is ready! Good job!
   
   
   
   


3. Now assign the MTR condition in the Freight Order type: (Freight Order type can be accessed using TA code /SCMTMS/C_FOR, by the way):

What happens now?

If now a Freight Document of this type is created by "Create Freight Document" from a freight Unit stage, the condition is evaluated. As the setting is Freight Order Type specific, it only applies for Freight Orders created with this type. This can be defined in the planing settings.

This what is looks like in action in the transportation cockpit:

Of course, when you assign the freight unit to a resource, the MTR of the resource is used, as it is more specific.

Limitations of the approach

Also, this is only considered when creating the document, e.g. if the freight unit is removed later, the MTR is not adapted. If there a re different MTRs on the freight unit stages when creating it, a random one would be picked, if you need more logic, a condition with a data access class picking one of the MTRs would be required.