Merge Shipments

This page is accessed via Shipment Management > Shipment Management > Buy Shipments > Actions > Operational Planning > Change Shipment Route > Merge Shipments.

This action allows you to merge shipments based on compatibility attributes as well as to manually merge shipments and disregard compatibility checks as described below.

Note: If you split order releases from a previously-merged shipment which had different involved parties on each of the original orders, those involved parties will be restored during the merge process. Additionally, if similar major involved parties exist on the split order releases, the major involved party on the release being merged into will take precedence.

This action cannot be used if the shipment was created from a schedule with a type of Dynamic trip or Static trip.

Note: This does not apply when using containers.

Note: The Merge Shipments action is not intended to undo relays. Use the Append Shipment action for this purpose.

Note: If a shipment has no orders after using this action, the shipment is deleted from the database if it is a planned shipment. A SAW (Shipment as Work) is not automatically deleted; however, you can delete using the delete button from the Shipment Manager.

Optimize

You can merge two or more compatible shipments. For shipments to be compatible, all the shipments that you want to merge must have the same attributes:

• transport mode
• itinerary
• items or ship units which can be combined onto a single shipment
• equipment type
• rate offering and record

You can either:

Select Consolidate and enter an equipment in the Equipment Group ID.

Or

Select Keep Equipment and select the target shipment from the Shipment ID drop-down list.

Note: You must select either 'Consolidate' or 'Keep Equipment' to continue with optimize merge of shipments.

Consolidate

Equipment Constraint

This action also checks the equipment capacity constraint. When consolidating equipment (Consolidate flag) on all shipments into one piece of equipment, Oracle Transportation Management tries to find the least expensive feasible equipment group that meets all the criteria, given the total weight/volume of all of the ship units on the merged shipment, equipment group profiles on the itinerary leg, maximum dimensions of the ship units, etc. If no equipment can be found, shipments are not merged. However, you can also manually select an equipment group and merge shipments on the specified equipment group (and the equipment capacity constraint is ignored).

The selected equipment group should be compatible with the equipment group profiles on the common leg. If it is not compatible, an error appears.

Bundling Shipments

If the shipments to be merged have the same source and destination locations, Oracle Transportation Management bundles them into one direct shipment. When 'Consolidate Equipment' is checked, OTM goes through the multi-stop consolidation process. The shipments are sorted either by weight or volume (descending), depending on the value of the multistop logic parameter 'MULTISTOP SORT SAME OD PAIR SHIPS BY VOLUME'. The bigger shipment is chosen as the target shipment to be merged to. If you choose the Force Merge action (manual merge), you can pick the target shipment to be merged to, however, the original ship unit structure is lost in manual merge. All other shipments are merged with the first shipment. If an equipment group is specified, Oracle Transportation Management does not check the Equipment Capacity constraint and it puts all ship units onto one piece of equipment on the first shipment with the specified equipment group. Otherwise, if consolidating equipment into one piece of equipment and this equipment is overloaded, an error appears.

Building Multi-Stop Shipment

If the shipments to be merged have different source and destination locations, they are built into one multi-stop shipment (the Consolidate flag must be checked). If an equipment group is not specified, Oracle Transportation Management evaluates the Equipment Group Profiles on the itinerary leg and tries to find the least expensive and feasible equipment group that fits the merged ship units --

• Total weight/volume of all the merged ship units
• Maximum dimensions of the merged ship units

If an equipment group is specified, Oracle Transportation Management creates a shipment equipment with this equipment group and assigns a least cost service provider for the merged shipment.

Keep Equipment

If you click Keep Equipment, you get the option to choose a target shipment. If you do not select any target shipment, the first shipment will be chosen as the target shipment. All the equipment from the selected shipments will be merged into the target shipment, and the downstream shipments will be re-driven.

Note: OTM consolidates the shipments according to the same source and destination and consolidates shipments into the largest available equipment.

Following are the validations, when you select 'Keep Equipment':

Note: Container mentioned in the below list is the container flag on the shipment group.

• If both container and non-container shipments are selected and you enter a target shipment, an error appears.
• If both container and non-container shipments are selected and you do not enter a target shipment, OTM merges only the non-container shipments by the bundling logic.
• If you select only container shipments and you enter a target shipment, OTM process the shipment with multi-stop multiple equipment. If this process returns one shipment back, OTM sets the target shipment on the combined shipment but if the selected shipments were combined into more than one shipment, an error appears.
• If you select only container shipments and do not select a target shipment, OTM process the shipments with the multi-stop consolidation process and returns the result. OTM creates multi-stop multiple equipment shipments.
• If you select only non-container shipments, OTM merges the target shipment or the first shipment by the bundling logic.

Manual Merge

You can also force shipments to merge. On the Merge Shipments page, select a single shipment on which to merge the shipments and click Manual.

Note: Manual merge is not supported for shipments that reuse equipment.