Downtime functionality of vehicle resource used in transportation planning
Hi,
During many of my interaction with clients, I have been asked the question as how the downtime of vehicl resource influence transportation planning and hence I have decided to explain this concept in details in this particular blog.
Often we confuse with the question wheather downtime and break ( may be lunch or breakfast ) are same or different. To clarify this , during downtime the vehicles are not available to be loaded/unloaded while in a break the vehicle loading and unloading activities can occur .Secondly during downtime the vehicle cannot be used and also it must be empty i.e no weights should be placed on the vehicle during this time.Always remember that a downtime for a resource always happens at a particular location such as in a garage.Hence based on the timeframe which we specify in a downtime, the subsequent and predessor activities are always influenced.The attachment 1 shows the assignment of location under downtime tab for a speciifc resource.
There are 2 types of down time. One is your planned downtime and second is when resource is empty.In this case SAP TM can be tightlyintegrated with SAP EAM ( enterprise asset management) where maintenance and repair work details like date and location can be maintained here.Thus based on the maintenance order in ECC , downtime of the resources can be maintained in the resource master.
Implication of downtime in planning:
Since resource availability influences transportation planning hence when downtime values are speciifed in the resource master, the optimiser need to consider this time frame.However in SAP TM 9.2 the new scheduling logic of calculating downtime has been changed .Hence the downtime is considered by optimiser for both optimiser planning and scheduling and it considers where and when the downtime is planned.Thus the resources needs to be always empty at start of downtime ( say at location A) .If the freight order considered by optimiser is at a different location ( say location B) , in that case the optimiser scheduler also considers the location B ( destination location of FO) to A ( location of down time) .
Secondly the optimiser explanation tool provides all analysis of the downtime considered.
The next article will detail out the various changes introduced in the transportation cockpit as part of TM9.2
Hi Idraneel, thanks for posting blog.
I have a one doubt.
once a downtime is maintained in a calendar and a location is added, the expectation would be that this downtime is only considered for the specific location. But it is considered for all locations which have this resource assigned.
For example, we had added one location with downtime to the regular customer calendar but this downtime was considered for all locations having this calendar assigned. This should not be the case. Either if i enter a location in the downtime line, this downtime should only be effective for this location or I should not have the option to enter a location here, then it would be clear that it pucks everything that has this resource.
please help me from this error.