Transportation Management with SAP LES

6
Other Functions in Delivery Documents
If you want to identify and trace each material (finished product) separately, you
can use serial numbers (for example, the vehicle identification number [VIN] on
an automobile).
The final sections of the chapter will describe the functions that you can execute
when registering and tracking a truck to pick up materials. These functions include
the driver’s registration at the entry gate, the transfer of data from weighing, the
printing of driver or vehicle identification, and so on.
6.1 Scheduling
To ship the goods that customers order from you, your company requires several
work steps. Picking the goods is an example of a work step. After picking, the
goods are packed and, if necessary, made available on pallets, stacking mesh pallets,
or other loading devices. At the same time, the forwarding agent is notified
of the transportation. The agent will take over the goods at your shipping point at
a specific time. When the driver arrives, the goods can be loaded. Shipping documents
are created, and after the materials have left your plant, a goods issue is
posted.
You can schedule these individual work steps in your shipping process. Scheduling
has an advantage, because when you accept an order, you can use these work steps
to let the customer know if the goods can arrive at the desired time. If scheduling
indicates that the goods cannot be delivered on the requested date, you can have
the SAP system calculate the earliest possible delivery date.
Another advantage of scheduling is that you can use the delivery monitor (Transaction
VL06O, see Section 11.2) in the SAP system at each process step. You can
use this function to view all due delivery documents at each intermediate step. For
example, if you work in the loading department and want to see all of the delivery
documents that are scheduled for loading the next day, you simply call the appropriate
function in the delivery monitor and select the next day as a parameter. That
gives you an overview of the work steps and the latest time at which each step
must begin. Figure 6.1 provides an overview of these times and milestones.
178
© 2014 by Galileo Press Inc., Boston (MA)