SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management 2020 released!

[peter_flensberg]

We are happy to share that the new release of SAP S/4HANA Transportation Management is now available.

SAP S/4HANA TM 2020 delivers a range of new features, enriches existing functionality and enhances usability, enabling our customers to benefit from the latest innovations. We continued to work on optimizing business process execution with warehouse management, logistics execution and on seamless integration with the Logistics Business Network.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Improved Transportation Planning & load optimization

• New constraints for loading and equipment requirements can now be defined for locations that require side loading or special handling equipment.


• A graphical marker for gravity is available in the 3D load plan as well as labels.


• Planning with combination resources (e.g. tractor with two semi-trailers).


• Introduction of a unified package builder API to allow consumption of parameters from multiple applications. More information you will find here.


• Enabled new embedded scheduling to minimize TCO and decrease optimizer load. This is the new default scheduling strategy. It doesn't require a remote communication and control framework (RCCF) call. You can indicate in the scheduling settings, that the system has to consider cost-based requested dates/times.


• Improvements in package building offering new package types and packaging material.

Figure 1: Planning with combination resources

2. Enhanced Usability to simplify and automate business processes

• New predefined queries for carrier invoice workflow resolution and new actions for carrier invoice reviews.


• Enable carriers to download their individual freight agreement RFQs in a structured Microsoft Excel file when responding to customer with their rates during the strategic freight procurement process. Carriers respond to customer with their rates directly in Microsoft Excel.


• Enablement of freight document processing by company code to facilitate settlement process in subcontracting scenarios. The company code from the freight documents is taken over by the settlement to post accruals.


• Improved error handling when receiving freight documents.

Figure 2: New Carrier Bid Sheet format

3. State-of-the-art Integration for synchronized business operations

• Integration of real-time execution data. In the transportation cockpit in freight documents you can display real-time execution data, such as delays or accidents. This will help you to notice issues during the execution of your transports at an early stage and to adapt the transportation plan if necessary.


• Enable freight order and freight booking tracking with ETA update: SAP TM sends a list of planned events to SAP LBN and receives updates.


• Handling of external freight units. With this feature you can plan freight units in Transportation Management (TM) in SAP S/4HANA that originate from an external system, for example from TM in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Figure 3: Freight order/booking tracking via SAP LBN

These are just a few of the new features. Please check the What’s New section for more information.