Creation of locations during integration with SAP TM

[Michael_Haase]

Dear friends of SAP TM,

In this blog post we already talked about the so-called one time locations and how they are created in SAP TM integration if a deviating delivery address is used in an embedded scenario.

But now, let's talk about the use case when a location for a 'regular' source or destination location is used but not created yet when entering SAP TM integration.

Let's explain this with the following example:

Assume, we have a sales order to deliver goods from shipping point 'ZMH1' and we integrate with SAP TM in an embedded scenario to do the transport planning.

The shipping point has of course been created in the system before creating the sales order:

SAP TM now requires locations to do the transport planning based on its address and other information. Means, source and destination (and possible intermediate stops) have to be represented by an entity of master data object 'Location'.

Now, we could have created the location of shipping point 'ZMH1' upfront with report /SAPAPO/CREATE_LOCATION, but somehow we didn't and there's also no need to do so.

During the integration of the sales order with SAP TM, we recognize that the location for the shipping point is still missing and trigger its creation 'on the fly':

And indeed, the location of the shipping point has been correctly used as source location in the created freight unit:

The same holds also true for destination locations, of course. And this works similarly for other documents from SD, LE and MM.

I hope this gives a bit more insight. Feel free to comment, I appreciate!

Best regards,

Michael