Capacity Limit

This page is accessed via Operational Planning > Capacity Management > Capacity Limits.

Capacity Limits can be used to manage service provider inventory of equipment by date range and determine a service provider's available capacity for accepting a shipment for transport.

Without using capacity constraints, a planner can create a rate offering for a shipment, then contact a service provider to see if they would accept that rate offering, leaving it up to the service provider to determine their available capacity. By using capacity constraints, a planner can create a capacity group to constrain the planning engine of Oracle Transportation Management and assign a service provider with available capacity for the lowest cost.

When capacity limits are saved, its corresponding data will be automatically saved to the Capacity Usage Manager. A record will be created in the Capacity Usage Manager for each capacity limit defined. For example, if capacity limits are defined for all 7 days of the week, for 4 weeks, then 28 records will appear in the Capacity Usage Manager.

A capacity limit is removable only if:

1. the capacity limit is in the current or a future period.
2. no capacity usage has been used.

Using A Capacity Limit

It is important to know how capacity is used as part of shipment planning before you create a capacity limit:

• A Capacity Group ID is associated with a group of rate offerings for a service provider. The Capacity Group ID is included as part of a capacity limit, including the date range based on the capacity period.
• When a shipment is created within the capacity time period, this creates a usage record ID that causes the capacity limit for that period to decrease by 1 (for example, a weekly shipment with a capacity usage ID, a start date of 2001-08-05 00:00:01, and an end date of 2001-08-11 23:59:59 with a limit of 5 would decrease to a limit of 4). Oracle Transportation Management checks for a service provider's available capacity based on usage against that capacity limit. In this case, if four more shipments are planned and a fifth were planned after capacity had expired, the fifth shipment would fail to build for capacity reasons.

• Note: A shipment cannot exceed capacity unless equipment is assigned to that shipment.

• When the shipment assigned a status type of CONFIRMED and a value of NOT_STARTED, meaning that it is a planned shipment, a planned capacity record is created for the shipment. When the shipment is assigned a status type of SECURE RESOURCES and a value of ACCEPTED, an actual capacity record is created for the shipment. Both of these records are included as part of capacity usage.

• Note: Planned and actual capacity usage records (shipments) do not decrease capacity usage records. Capacity usage only decreases against a predetermined limit when shipments are first created and usage is counted against the capacity limit.

Capacity Limit

Note: To use capacity functionality, you must create an equipment group in shipments with only one equipment type in that group designated for capacity, and then select the same equipment type when you create a capacity limit.

1. Enter a Capacity Limit ID.
2. Enter a Capacity Group ID for this service provider. This ID should correspond to the Capacity Group ID assigned to a rate offering.
3. Next, enter the Equipment Type ID. In capacity planning, Oracle Transportation Management measures capacity limits against equipment types for service providers that have available capacity.
4. You can enter a Lane ID for this capacity limit. When creating a lane, it is possible to specify capacity limits with overlapping lanes for a service provider's rate offering. The geographic lane hierarchy is:

• • Country
  • State
  • City
  • Location

In the above hierarchy, the planning engine would look for the capacity lane ID that is the most geographically specific against the rate offering lane ID (with country being the most general and location the most specific). For a shipment with a rate offering originating out of Philadelphia ( PHL), consider the following possible lane combinations:

• • USA to USA
  • PHL to USA
  • CHI to USA

Though USA to USA and PHL to USA are both possible lane matches, PHL to USA is the most specific based solely on the lane hierarchy, so that lane would be chosen for this shipment.

5. Enter a Capacity Limit Group ID if you want the carrier capacity constraints that should apply to a leg or a group of legs, instead of defining carrier capacity by lane. You can create capacity limits with either Lane ID or Capacity Limit Group ID, but not both.
6. Select the Effective Date and time for the beginning of the period specified in the capacity limit. The Expiration Date is determined by the information entered in the Recurring Capacity section. The Effective Date must be selected based on the period (or per) value specified under Recurring Capacity.

Note: If you select a rate offering to be included in a capacity group that is used to create a capacity limit, and the expiration date of the capacity limit is prior to that of the rate offering, OTM will assume the service provider has zero capacity if it rates the shipment after the capacity limit has expired. For this reason, the effective and expiration dates of the rate offering should be similar to those for the capacity limit.

7. Enter a rail reservation number in the Reservation Number field, if needed.
8. Enter a rail route code in the Route Code ID field, if needed. The route code should be one that contains the stop details of a unit train.

Note: The Reservation Number and the Route Code ID fields are required if you wish to create multi-stop, multi-equipment shipments.

Note: When saving a capacity limit, the reservation number and the route code will be copied on to the capacity usage. The reservation number will be copied on to the shipment during bulk planning.

 

Recurring Capacity

1. Enter the Capacity Limit for this period. This denotes the total number of shipments that can be created for the Equipment Type ID specified above.
2. Select a Per value specifying the period in which the capacity limit will be in effect (annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, or day of week). Enter the For value denoting the number for which the Per period will be in effect.

A Capacity Limit can be set for a duration of no longer than a year. A shipment can neither build nor count as a planned shipment if it is built outside the period of available capacity.

Note: You cannot overlap capacity periods as specified in the Per field. For example, you cannot create capacity for a monthly period from 2001-01-01 00:00:01 to 2001-01-31 23:59:59 and then create capacity for a weekly period from 2001-01-21 to 2001-01-27 for the same capacity limit.

Daily Capacity Tool

1. If you are setting up available capacity on a daily basis, but the capacity limits are different for particular days of the week, then enter the Capacity Limit for each day in the Daily Capacity Tool.
2. After entering the capacity limit for each day of the week, use the For field to enter the number of weeks that this will be in effect.

No Capacity Usage

Select this option so that no capacity usage record is created. The capacity limit will be effective only for the date mentioned in the Effective Date field.

Also see Tactical Capacity.