Itinerary Legs and Bulk Planning

Some of the most important constraints that the bulk plan or any planning action honors are held on the itinerary leg. Listed below are just some of the constraints that are relevant to the bulk plan.

• Rate Offering ID
• Rate Record ID
• Leg Classification
•  Mode Profile
• Service Provider Profile
• Rate Service Profile
• Equipment Group Profile and Multi-modal Equipment Sets
• Network ID

Tuning Options

In addition to constraints, itinerary legs also hold the following options.

Auto Consolidation Type

The Auto consolidation type option specifies how the order releases and order movements get consolidated into equipment. This option is used in the shipment building process. The values for Auto Consolidation Type are as follows: NO AUTO CONSOLIDATE, MULTISTOP INTO ONE EQUIP, CONSOL INTO ONE EQUIP, and  CONSOL INTO ONE SHIP MULTIEQUIP.

This option only applies when the ORDER ROUTING METHOD parameter is set to Cost-based Order Routing.

Equipment Assignment Type

The equipment assignment type option has the following values: Optimize Equipment, Re-use Equipment and No Equipment. This option determines if the equipment is stuffed at a consolidation location and then de-stuffed at a deconsolidation location. Between the stuffing and de-stuffing locations, the contents of the equipment are not changed and the containers are moved as a whole.

This option only applies when the ORDER ROUTING METHOD parameter is set to Cost-based Order Routing.

Equipment Group Profile Versus Multi-modal Equipment Set

Note: Multi-modal equipment group sets were developed to handle the cost based selection of the right equipment group across various modes. With the enhanced container optimization logic (added in OTM 6.3), cost based optimization became an integral part of container optimization. This change made the multi-modal equipment group sets redundant. Multi-modal equipment group sets were kept for backward compatibility for existing implementations.

An equipment group profile contains a set of equipment that can be used during the shipment building process. The shipment building process will take the common equipment from the Equipment Group Profile on the following sources:

• itinerary leg
• order releases on the order bundle
• locations
• rate offering and rate records

Multi-modal equipment groups serve the purpose of defining an equipment group profile for each mode. The shipment building logic and the multi-stop logic chooses the equipment group that best fits from each of the equipment group profiles in the set and chooses the best one based on the cost. Even though the purpose of this logic was to compare between modes, nothing prevents you from defining any combination of equipment in these multi-modal equipment group sets.

ROUTING NETWORKS AND ITINERARIES

This option only applies when the ORDER ROUTING METHOD parameter is set to Network Routing.

Network Routing provides the following:

• An additional way of modeling transportation networks in an easier and more flexible manner.
• Logic for intelligently routing order releases through transportation networks.
• • This logic accounts for order volumes and synergies of flow when making routing decisions.
  • This logic can be used for both order release planning and order movement planning.

Note: Pre-6.3 order routing logic is still available, so that scenarios set up prior to version 6.3 will still work in OTM 6.3.

Network Routing solves problems about how to route order releases through transportation networks where one or more shipments in sequence are needed to transport the order release from its source to its destination. Order releases may need to be routed through cross-docks and pools or other intermediate locations (or "through-points"), and in many transportation scenarios, there is a choice about which cross-docks or pools or through-points to use.

Network Routing is useful when the following is true:

• When sending an order release from its source to its destination, multiple shipments are potentially needed and where some shipments deliver into intermediate locations such as cross-docks, etc. For example, the order release must first ship into a Denver cross-dock, before being put on another truck to ship to its destination.
• A given order release has a choice of different intermediate points. For example, there are three different cross-docks that might be used for this order release, or perhaps two through-points in succession, such as an order release routed through a cross-dock and then a deconsolidation pool.
• This routing choice of intermediate points is determined at the time of planning, rather than being fixed ahead of time.
• Network routing is especially relevant when the routing choice depends in part upon the order release volumes and where they are coming from and going to. For example, there are already some orders being sent through the Indianapolis cross-dock, so it is cheaper to fill up those trucks with orders that otherwise might more cheaply be routed through the Louisville cross-dock.