Itineraries and Bulk Plan

An itinerary consists of one or more legs. Proper setup of itineraries is extremely important in shaping the single-leg and multi-leg shipments. Itineraries provide a template for the movement of order releases through the transportation network. Itineraries are comprised of one or more legs that form the guideline for routing the order releases. Several constraints can be specified on the itinerary to define the nature of shipments built using the itinerary.

Status

An itinerary can be Active, Inactive or Manual. Active itineraries are used during bulk plan and OTM actions. An inactive itinerary does not get considered during any planning process: neither during bulk plan or during a planning action. However, setting an itinerary to Manual will prevent the bulk plan from using the itinerary, but the itinerary will be used when performing planning actions.

Source Region / Destination Region

An itinerary has a source region and a destination region, which are used to match order bundles to the itineraries. An order bundle can match to more than one itinerary. Matching to multiple itineraries is typically used to compare the planning of orders on multiple itineraries and then to choose the best one.

Pool-crossdock Itinerary

The itineraries that have the Pool-crossdock Itinerary check box set are called pool-crossdock itineraries or consolidation itineraries. Here are a few things to know about pool-crossdock itineraries:

• The pool-crossdock itineraries can have only one leg.
• The orders matching to pool-crossdock itineraries can be planned on to multi-stop shipments. Note that OTM plans multi-stop shipments on non-pool-crossdock itineraries as well. However, OTM builds multi-stop shipments on the first and last legs of the itinerary only. Multi-stop shipments are not built on middle legs of the itinerary.
• OTM bulk plan prefers pool-crossdock itineraries over non-pool-crossdock itineraries. If an order release cannot be planned on a pool-crossdock itinerary, then OTM will consider non-pool-crossdock itineraries. If more than one pool-crossdock itinerary is available for an order bundle, then the itinerary selection rule, which is based on either the total weight of orders matched to the itinerary or number of order releases matched to the itinerary, is used to choose the itinerary. This rule is set using the parameter CHOOSE ITINERARY BY NUM OF ORDERS. If the parameter is set to true, OTM uses the number of orders matching to the itinerary as a criteria for selecting the itinerary.

Itinerary Constraints

There are several constraints that can be defined on the itinerary for controlling how shipments are built. The constraints are defined in the Details section of the Parameters tab on the Itinerary.

Note: These constraints will not be used for an itinerary which includes a network on one of its legs.