Understanding Transportation Lead Times

The transportation lead time is the in-transit interval from the date and time that a shipment leaves your warehouse (inventory business unit) to the date and time that it arrives at your customer's receiving dock. Time in transit is affected by factors such as the warehouse location, the freight carrier, and the customer location. Additional factors such as the days of the week that the warehouse, customer and carrier are closed also affect the lead time. You establish the transportation lead time that results from a particular combination of these factors and determine how the system should search the combinations to arrive at a transportation lead time for a particular order schedule.

The transportation lead time is used in calculating the scheduled shipment and scheduled arrival dates on the order when you enter either a requested arrival date or a requested shipment date.

The transportation lead times are calculated using arbitration plans and rules. The system searches for all matching transportation lead time rules and sorts them based on the arbitration plan using the longest lead time, shortest lead time, or the arbitration plan sequence. If the arbitration plan sequence is used, the system then looks to see if you want to sort the rules alphabetically, or by the longest or shortest lead time. The system then uses the first lead time rule in the list that produces a valid shipment and arrival date.

At the PeopleSoft Order Management business unit level, the system can process adjustments to the shipment and arrival dates by calculating the dates going forward or backward. Previously the dates were only calculated forward.

If the date is too early or late relative to the requested arrival date, hold processing can be used to further control the shipment. However, if the order is for a customer pickup, the Arrival Date Window hold does not apply.

In previous releases, the system did not consider exception dates for the carrier and the dates were only calculated looking ahead. The table illustrates the previous new methods to calculate the dates for an order date placed on Wednesday, 12/07/2006 with a requested arrival dates of Tuesday, 12/13/2006 and a three-day transportation lead time.