Possibilities and differences between Basic and Advanced TM

[t_jungesblut]

Hello experts,

We have a few questions regarding the differences between Basic and Advanced TM in an On-Premise S/4Hana (1909) environment. It would already be a great help if only some of these questions could be answered. The customer is managing his own trucks for different stages of multiple transportation chains.

1. Would the creation of individual Freight Orders for different legs in a transportation chain be necessary (or should a single Freight Order be created for the whole transportation chain)? As far as I understand, in a scenario using Basic TM, we would need to create all these Freight Orders individually and would have to assign individual Freight units to multiple Freight Orders. Is Basic TM capable of planning main legs of a given transport? Would it be possible to automate the planning in Basic TM or would Advanced TM be necessary for that?
2. Is it possible to assign new Freight Units to a Freight Order automatically? In our case a truck uses a certain tour every two days and would pick up every Freight Unit whenever it arrives at the home station. We would like to prevent a situation, in which we would have to individually assign these picked up Freight Units to a Freight Order for that tour, which would also have to be created manually, even though it repeats itself.
3. Does TM support the use of Scanners? Is there a difference in that regard for the capabilities of Basic and Advanced TM?
4. Can transportation planning consider certain restrictions (e. g. loading capacities of certain trucks, regional holidays or costs)? As far as I know restrictions like these can only be considered in automated planning (optimizer), which would require Advanced TM.
5. Is Basic TM capable of managing Load carrying devices like pallets. In a lot of cases, carrying devices are borrowed or quickly bought and sold again. Transactions like these would need to be traced and managed. Is that possible in Basic/Advanced TM?

Ultimately, we are tyring to answer whether Basic TM would be sufficient or if Advanced TM is needed.

Regards,

Tim

[GRABLERE · Accepted solution]

Hi Tim,

please find note "3065464-Definition: Basic Shipping vs basic Transportation Management vs advanced Transportation Management", which describes basic shipping vs advanced" for official SAP documentation on supported functionality.

Maybe some feedback and questions in regards to your points (again no official SAP communication, that one is above:) )

1. The topic of transportation chain in general is not covered 1:1 in TM compared to LE-TRA (yet?), the question is in regards to your business case, what you want to achieve with a single document for full transport. If this is to cover a multimodal transport with pre- main- on-carriage, in general you can use freight bookings in basic shipping. What is not supported is the functionality of stage-wise invoicing carrier. So as long as you invoice via your header carrier in this scenario and not for every stage of the transport individually, basic shipping should be fine.

2.Optimizer planning and with it incremental planning is only part of advanced shipping and receiving, if you need a process where you create Freight Orders up-front, I think there is nothing to support in standard basic shipping. My recommendation would be an enhancement in a Freight Unit Builder post method(this can be achieved modification free via process controler framework), that looks for existing freight orders matching the grouping criteria you have(probably date and source location) and do an assignment of new freight units.

3.Here I would need to know, which scanners you are reffering to for which process.

4.While basic shipping does not include the optimizer it does included the embedded scheduler(find a posting about it here(Link to Blog). The scheduler should consider factory calenders and opening hours and therefore the time constraints your are looking for. In regards to capacities, the scheduler + manual planning does not consider capacities(otherwise it would very much go in the optimizer space), but you can use equipment with capacities and the system will calculate the utilization of this equipment, so the user has an indication during manual planning that truck is not overloaded.

5.Sorry, here I also would need some more context on what you mean with loading carrying devices. My best guess would be pallets etc. that are not represented via handling units?! In that case local package items are supported in basic shipping.

Hope this helps.
Regards,

Emanuel

[t_jungesblut · Accepted solution]

Hi Emanuel,

thank you very much for your feedback and answers, it helped a lot.

Regarding topics 3 and 5:

3. Ideally the workers unloading and loading trucks could report the arrival and departure of Freight Units through the use of scanners and use that data to update the Freight Order. Basically, instead of updating a Freight Order manually, we would like to use scanners.

5. Yes, the question is regarding pallets.There are some financial transcations connected to the buying/selling/burrowing of pallets needed to move the freight. I believe these transactions would need to be recorded in TM and booked in MM or acounting.

[GRABLERE · Accepted solution]

Hi,

in regards to 3:

TM itself does not have any direct out of the box integration of scanners/RF devices. If the customer is planning to also implement EWM embedded and use the new advance shipping and receiving, he could use the EWM based RF transcations, in case there is no limitation license wise on EWM side(don't know EWM licensing model in S4).

in regards to 5:

Still do not get the process on your end 100% but sounds like it is not designed completely anyway. But argument stands you can use local packages and I believe also calculate cost based on it.

Regards,

Emanuel

[steven_foo · Accepted solution]

Our management is asking us to installed Advanced TM. Could you highlight where we could download the installer file and the steps required.

Thank you.

[GRABLERE · Accepted solution]

Hi Steven,

basic TM is technically not a different version than advanced transportation management, it just limits(not technically but contractually) the use to certain functionality. If you are having a fully operational TM system with basic shipping, you have advanced transportation management installed just with the advanced license you are allowed to use all the features which were limitted as described in the note above.

Regards,

Emanuel

[janboeykens]

Is it technically possible to put a Freight Unit in multiple Freight Orders (like you'd put a one Outbound Delivery in mutiple LE-TRA shipments)? Physically my case repesents some cross docking (but we don't want to make all inbound and outbound deliveries). It's Handling Units going from 1 truck into another (mixed with materials from the 'cross docking' warehouse itself). When I'm manually trying in the transportation cockpit, the system moves my delivery from the first to the second....