Product Information
Incoterm location in freight unit stage building of SAP TM
Dear friends of SAP TM,
In this blog post, we already talked about the assignment of incoterm locations in SD, MM and LE to ‘real’ locations in SAP TM. In the example, we have seen that an additional stop had been created for the incoterm location:
Now, we will take a closer look at the necessary settings in customizing to enable (or disable) this adding of a stop in freight unit stage building.
The main setting influencing this behavior is the so-called Incoterm Location Stage Building Rule in the Logistics Integration Profile:
Basically, this setting decides during TM integration whether stages in freight units are built from and to the incoterm location and whether they are planning relevant or not.
In total, we have six different values for this setting. As they might be a bit hard to understand, let’s make an example. We assume, we have incoterm EXW (Ex Works) and we create a sales order to deliver some goods from a plant to a customer, whereas the goods are to be picked up at a distribution center.
Here, you can see the six different values of the Incoterm Location Stage Building Rule and how the stages are built when integrating the sales order with TM:
So you see, depending on the Incoterm Location Stage Building Rule, the stage building differs and thus does the transportation planning. In other words…you choose the Logistics Integration Profile per sales document type/distribution channel and decide thereby with the selected Incoterm Location Stage Building Rule if you want to plan the whole transport or only the part from or to the incoterm location. Similarly of course when integrating documents from MM and LE.
Means…when you miss a stage in your created freight units, first check those settings before blaming the system or some innocent ABAP developers 🙂
I hope this gives a bit insight in stage building regarding incoterm locations.
Any feedback is appreciated!
Best regards,
Michael
Thanks Michael!
Is there actually a difference between "Two active stages - Type 1" and "Two active stages - Type 2" ?
Hi Valentijn,
Thanks for your comment!
According to my experiences and what the application help of the field tells there is no difference regarding stage building.
Best regards,
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thanks for clear explanation on this? When we have more than 2 stages, is that also through incoterm?
Regards,
Abhijit
Hi Abhijt,
No, this can't be through an incoterm location. The usage of an incoterm location can lead only to at most one more stage.
Best regards,
Michael
Which configuration should I choose if in my scenario once order started the Customer A could cancel the Sales Order mid way of my Freight order execution and I would like to save time and re assign the same Freight order to another Customer B?
my question is - should I reverse back all BIL LE SD documents or is there any other smart way to TM to complete such a switch ?
we call it Diversion from Customer A to Customer B. More complicated scenario is that I could divert if from Customer B (external customer) to Customer C (internal Customer)
Hi Adi,
I guess this is independent from the topic of incoterm location and stage building which is discussed here, right?
I can't tell you right away how to handle this as this requires some deeper analysis of the scenario, sorry.
Best regards,
Michael
Hello Michael,
found the blog really helpful.
our customer has scenarios where we want to block the incoterm stage in TM. is it possible using this customization node?
thank you
Sandeep Bandaru
Hello Sandeep,
Thanks, I appreciate!
Quite frankly, I'm not sure what you mean by 'blocking the incoterm stage' and which node you are referring to. Can you describe with an example?
Best regards,
Michael
Hello Michael,
sorry for confusion.
Here is the complete scenario:
When the customer creates a STO or SO, they input the incoterm location 1 and incoterm location 2 fields. And then outbound message is triggered to TM, even though on ECC side there is only a single stage from source to destination location, the FU is created with 2 stages including the incoterm location as the transhipment location (due to the set-up done in "assign incoterm location to location").
But the customer doesn't want to see incoterm location stage created on TM side in FU for domestic outbound scenarios.
This is a specific case for domestic outbound scenarios. Whereas for inbound scenarios, the incoterm location stage is required. And customer uses the same incoterm locations for both outbound and inbound. It sounds weird, but they do.
I wanted to enquire whether with "logistics integration profile" setting, can we manage to block the creation of incoterm location stage in the FU for some specific customer scenarios.
Or there is no choice but to go for a customer specific enhancement for this.
Please let me know your suggestion on this.
Thank you
Sandeep Bandaru
Hi Sandeep,
Thanks for clarifying!
From how I understand your scenario, this is definitely possible with the logistics integration profile! When selecting the logistics integration profile in TM integration, one of the criteria is the document type. So you can create and assign an appropriate logistics integration profile not only for inbound and outbound but even on document type level. This should then fulfill your requirement to differentiate.
Best regards,
Michael
thanks Michael. will try to test this way.
Hi Michael,
Thank you for the insightful post. My scenario is that for ex work incoterm, customer will directly send his own transport to the plant location. In this case there will be no freight unit generated and customer will not be charged further ahead. Can freight unit not be generated only for incoterm ex work? And it should be generated for other incoterm?
Regards
Omkar
Hi Omkar,
You mean there's no freight unit at all being created? Without knowing details, I would not assume any connection to the used incoterm. If freight units are build or not should be independent from the incoterm, but depends strongly on the customizing settings for the logistics integration.
I would check the settings for the integration sales documents, if there's any respective entry with an assigned logistics integration profile. And if here the freight unit building rule is maintained properply.
Best regards,
Michael
Hi Michael,
This post is helpful in understanding the various planning scenarios wrt Incoterm. However there seems to be an issue with stage building when the Incoterm location is not assigned to a location.
In case of a side car scenario, the message used to fail. However In embedded TM, even if we have defined the Incoterm as one requiring location and if the location has not been created, it still creates a freight unit in our system. I dont know if there is any other configuration that is driving this behavior, but this is our initial observation.
With Regards,
Sandeep A. Walekar