Monday Knowledge Snippet (MKS) – 38 TM 9.1 Load Planning: Prepare your resources

As a follow-up to the last Monday Knowledge Snippet (MKS) – 37 TM 9.1 Load Planning, I would like to explain today how to setup the resources to enable load planning.

Basically, load planning deals with putting stuff onto a resources (or into a container…). Next to item destination, loading strategies, times and item dependent attributes like stackability, the resource itself is the key factor for this process. While in the past SAP TM considered the resource capacity regarding weight and volume and some basic limitations like maximum item length, width and height, the new load planning function requires much more information on master data level. Not only shall weight and volume limitation be considered more precisely, but also weight distribution regarding axles shall be planned. This is required to fulfill legal restrictions when creating a load plan.

Capacity setting for resource (already available before TM 9.1)

So what’s new? Within the resource master data, there are plenty of new fields to maintain under tab ‘Physical Properties’.

Physical Properties of Resource (pullout)

Here it is possible to specify attributes regarding dimension, weight, and type of resource. Keep in mind this only needs to be maintained in case you want to use load planning.

One specific thing is the definition of axle groups.

Axle group definition

Lots of numbers, isn’t it? As I always find it hard to image how they work together, SAP TM 9.1 will come with a resource viewer and configurator. There you can first browse through the resources and check how they are maintained and look like in 3-D.

Resource Browser

In the area ‘Resource Configurator’ it is possible to enter the relevant display attributes and immediately see the effect.

Resource Configurator

By the way, in the above example you see a split deck. Another feature of the SAP TM 9.1 load planning.

Within the resource browser (and of course in the standard integration into the Transportation Cockpit) there are multiple views available like seeing the resource from the side, back, or top.

Top view of Resource

Having defined those resource attributes, the system is ready to go for load planning. Next step is to define the load planning settings for the specific scenario (picking the right rules…).

Stay tuned.