Bulk Plan Orders (Buy or Sell)

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Order Management > Order Release > Order Release > Actions > Operational Planning > Create Buy Shipment or Create Sell Shipment > Bulk Plan - Buy and Bulk Plan - Sell
Brokerage and Forwarding > Booking > Freight Forwarding > Actions > Create Buy Shipment or Create Sell Shipment > Bulk Plan - Buy and Bulk Plan - Sell

Bulk planning is the consolidation of two or more orders into one or more shipments. When you create a shipment from an order release, Oracle Transportation Management determines the equipment group, costs, stop times, the stop sequence, and itinerary for the new shipment according to the rules of shipment planning logic.

Use this action when you want Oracle Transportation Management to determine the optimal shipment plan for multiple order releases at one time. Oracle Transportation Management builds direct or multi-stop shipments with the least cost. For example, during bulk planning, Oracle Transportation Management evaluates the most cost effective shipment plan based on the attributes of the orders you are planning and does one of the following:

bundles orders together on one or more shipments
creates individual shipments for each order
creates multi-stop shipments if you have valid itineraries and rates that support multi-stop planning

If the selected orders do not all fit on one shipment, additional shipments are created. Oracle Transportation Management does not automatically split orders to maximize equipment capacity, but tries to put as many whole orders as possible on a piece of equipment.

The order release status value is set to PLANNING_PLANNED - FINAL after a shipment is successfully created. Oracle Transportation Management also updates this status value as shipments move to execution.

Note: If you have activated Rate Preferences in Power Data and defined a Rate Preference, Oracle Transportation Management will, for each transport mode, select only among your preferred rates when building your shipment.

After you perform a Bulk Plan, the Bulk Plan Manager appears with the results of the bulk plan.

Each order release that is part of the bulk plan is assigned the Bulk Plan ID that appears (only if you are bulk planning buy shipments; if you perform the Bulk Plan action for sell shipments, an ID is generated but not assigned to the order releases). You can use the Bulk Plan ID to search for orders and shipments that are part of the plan using the Order Base Manager, the Order Release Manager, and the Buy Shipment Manager.

When you launch this action, you are given several options before the shipment is planned.

Select a Parameter Set ID. Different parameter sets may have different bulk plan parameters specified.
Enter a Description for the bulk plan.
Enter a Scenario Group for the bulk plan. You may query on bulk plans by scenario group to limit the results returned by the query.
Select the What-If Scenario check box if you do not want shipments to be generated.
Enter the start time and end time in the fields Planning Day Start Time and Planning Day End Time, if you want the bulk plan to be such that all the planned orders are shipped starting on a particular planning time window.
For example, the planner runs a 50 order bulk plan on Monday for the Wednesday plan. All the orders will either be shipped starting Wednesday, or not be planned at all.
Note: Orders might be planned on a multi-leg itinerary. In which case, the first leg shipments will be planned on the planning time window; but the subsequent leg shipments may start later.
If you do not provide any values in these fields, the planning day and duration are determined using the parameters PLANNING DAY START OFFSET and PLANNING DAY DURATION. However, if these parameters are set to their default values, there is no planning day restriction.
Note: The Planning Day Start Time and Planning Day End Time apply to the local time zones of the orders' source locations. If there is a planning day window defined for the bulk plan, the planning day logic overrides the parameters MIN BUNDLING TIME WINDOW AFTER CURRENT TIME and NUM OF SHIFTS PER DAY.
Click OK.

Order Movements

If you use the parameter and want to unassign an order from a shipment, you can use the Unassign and Delete Order Movements action so the appropriate order movements are removed as well.

If an order movement is split onto multiple shipments, new order movements will be created, one for each shipment.

The priority on the order release is copied to the priority on the order movement whenever a bulk plan is run.

Bulk Plan Configuration

The following represents the standard routing of orders through the bulk plan process.

Bundle orders that have the same source and destination.
Where feasible, Oracle Transportation Management builds direct shipments.
Consolidate remaining orders into multi-stop shipments, if possible. (That is, if you have valid itineraries and rates that support multi-stop planning).
Remaining orders are then routed through a consolidation or deconsolidation pool (if feasible).
Any remaining orders are routed through a cross-dock.

However, you can also configure the bulk plan process using the BUILD DIRECT SHIPMENT OPTION parameter. For example, you can specify if you do not want Oracle Transportation Management to build multi-stop shipments and to only build direct shipments or you can have Oracle Transportation Management plan through a pool first and then try to plan multi-stop shipments.

You can also create a parameter set that maps out the process you want Oracle Transportation Management to follow. This set could then replace the DEFAULT set under Domain Settings so that the one you created is always used. In addition, when you run a bulk plan, you can specify which parameter set to use. You can create multiple parameter sets and choose a different one for each bulk plan. For example, one parameter set may have multi-stop shipments planned first and then pool shipments planned. Another parameter set could indicate the reverse.

When you initiate the bulk plan action, Oracle Transportation Management asks you to specify a parameter set that determines the parameter settings that are used to process the bulk plan. The default parameter set configured for the domain in Domain Settings appears if a default was configured.

Accept the default or choose a new set from the list.

Note: You can create a Solution Improvement Configuration to have the planned shipments that result from a bulk plan evaluated for opportunities to improve solution quality, specifically, to reduce cost.

Bulk Plan Notification

You can use the Contact Notification Manager to configure notifications when a bulk plan completes processing or when a bulk plan fails (a bulk plan failure is rare but if this happens no order releases are planned on shipments). For example, you can have Oracle Transportation Management send a person an email when a bulk plan completes processing. The email displays the same data as the Bulk Plan Details page in the Bulk Plan Manager. It also includes a link that takes you directly to the Bulk Plan Manager.

Navigate to Contact Notification.
Enter Bulk_Plan in the Contact Notification ID field and click Search.
Click the BULK PLAN - COMPLETED or the BULK PLAN - FAILED events and configure the event to meet your communication needs.

Bulk Planning Considerations and Configuration

The bulk planner first bundles orders that have the same source and destination and then consolidates the remaining orders into multi-stop shipments, if possible. The remaining orders that cannot be bundled or consolidated are built into direct shipments.
Make sure that all of the rate offerings that you want to be used in the multi-stop algorithm have a Planning Rate created for them.
The order releases associated with a shipment that has not been moved to execution can be planned again using the Process Manager.
Planning groups can be used if you only want the bulk planner to consider a certain group of orders.
When performing a bulk plan you should only use plannable and/or unassigned order releases in the saved query. Do not choose any order release that has one of the following status values:
- PLANNING_EXECUTED PARTIAL
- PLANNING_EXECUTED FINAL
- PLANNING_CREDIT_HOLD
- PLANNING_PLANNED_HOLD

Also note that if you choose order release with a status of PLANNING_PLANNED - FINAL, Oracle Transportation Management will unassign the order release from its existing shipments and re-consider it in the bulk plan optimization.

Bulk Plan Processing Configuration

When orders are sent into bulk plan, Oracle Transportation Management tries all the various options to build shipments for each order sent. You can configure the routing and processing of orders processed during bulk plan. For example, if you know that you do not want to do any type of pool swapping, you can turn this parameter off and Oracle Transportation Management will bypass this functionality.

Standard Order Routing through Bulk Plan

The following represents a high level view of the standard routing of orders through the bulk plan process.

Bundle orders that have the same source and destination.
Where feasible, Oracle Transportation Management builds direct shipments.
Consolidate remaining orders into multi-stop shipments, if possible. (That is, if you have valid itineraries and rates that support multi-stop planning).
Remaining orders will then be routed through a consolidation or deconsolidation pool (if feasible).
Any remaining orders will be routed through a cross-dock.

Note: When you perform bulk planning of multiple order releases involving ground consol shipments with different itineraries, the Leg Consolidation Group ID defined for the consol legs of the itineraries should be the same.

Configurable Routing

The bulk plan process is configurable using parameters.

Examples:

You can specify if you do not want Oracle Transportation Management to build multi-stop shipments and to only build direct shipments.
You can tell Oracle Transportation Management to plan through a pool first and then try to plan multi-stop shipments.

You can set up a parameter set mapping out the process you want Oracle Transportation Management to follow.

When you run a bulk plan, you can specify which parameter set to use. You can select a different one for each bulk plan.
For example, one parameter set may have multi-stop shipments planned first and then pool shipments planned. Another parameter set could indicate the reverse. You can use these parameter sets accordingly during each bulk plan run.

You can specify what types of shipments Oracle Transportation Management should create first.

Click Transportation Planning and Execution > Power Data > Planning > Parameter Sets.
View the Parameter Set DEFAULT (this is in the Public domain).
The following options can be configured using the Parameter BUILD DIRECT SHIPMENT OPTION.

NOT BUILD DIRECT SHIPMENT (Value = 1)

Oracle Transportation Management does not build direct shipments or multi-stop shipments during bulk plan.

NOT BUILD MULTISTOP SHIPMENT (Value = 2)

Oracle Transportation Management does not build multi-stop shipments during bulk plan.

BUILD MULTISTOP BEFORE PLAN THRU POOL (Value = 3).

This is the default option.

BUILD MULTISTOP AFTER PLAN THRU POOL (Value = 4)