Bulk Plan Processes

The bulk plan process builds shipments out of order releases/order movements and it involves two major steps:

• routing
• shipment consolidation.

Let's review at a high level the routing and shipment consolidation.

Routing

The first major step in the bulk planning order releases is routing. There are two types of routing methods: cost-based and network. To specify the routing logic used by Oracle Transportation Management, set the parameter ORDER ROUTING METHOD to either Cost-based Routing or Network Routing.

• Cost Based Routing
• Network Routing

Consolidation

The second major step in the process is shipment building and consolidation. The shipment building and consolidation for both the cost based and network based routing methods involves the following major decisions:

• Splitting decisions – how should the order release be split in order to fit on the available pieces of equipment. Inside bulk plan, the splitting decision is handled by the Container Optimization Logic.
• Routing decisions – how should the order release be routed using an itinerary and a choice of pools and cross-docks or available networks.
• Consolidation decisions – how should the order releases be consolidated in order to achieve the lowest transportation cost.
• Sequencing Decisions
• Carrier Decisions
• Equipment Decisions

There are several tuning parameters that control the decisions listed above which are described in Tuning Order Bundling Logic for the cost based routing and in Tuning Direct Shipment Building for the network based routing.