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former_member186731
Active Contributor

Today I would like to explain how to setup distance determination using an external GIS for a specific means of transport.

First of all let's create a means of transport (TM Customizing 'Define Means of Transport').

Relevant in standard for the GIS distance determination are the fields low, medium, and high speed. Those are typically passed to external GIS distance services. The fields below for average speed and the distance factor are used by the standard when calculating the distance using straight line logic (as the crow flies). Note that depending on the used external GIS of course also other Means of Transport or custom attributes could be used to further manipulate the distance results (like height or weight restrictions). As the external call is anyway custom code, it is possible to enrich the distance request in whatever required manner.

For each Means of Transport it is required to activate the usage of the GIS tool by setting the flag 'GIS Quality'. This enables to define very generic GIS settings in the system, but restrict the usage to a set of Means of Transport. For example for some of your trucks a straight line distance is sufficient as they are not influencing your transportation planning.

Next step is the definition of the usage of the GIS tool.

The 'Use GIS Tool' indicator basically enables a central on/off switch of the complete functionality. It is kind of a leftover from the old days and can be used in case you have a problem with your external service and want to get your scenario running based on straight line without having to change all other settings.

When using the standard external distance determination with the SAP IGS (which is very uncommon nowadays), you have to enter here a valid RFC destination pointing to a running IGS server having the GIS installed and running.

Finally, you have to define the GIS strategy settings.

Here you assign the to-be-used GIS service to the Means of Transport. Currently it is also required to specify which geo-coordinates shall be sued (Geo-Coding level), but this is under discussion. In general it is possible to make a very generic entry which is then valid for all Means of Transport. See activity documentation for more information.

To test your settings, you can use report /SCMB/TEST_DDD.

More info on the GIS Integration itself can be found here: http://scn.sap.com/community/scm/transportation-management/blog/2013/04/22/monday-knowledge-snippet-...