Order Release Equipment

The Order Release Equipment ID field determines the equipment that this ship unit is on when multiple pieces of equipment have been defined in the Specific Equipment to be Ordered section of an order release or in the Equipment detail section of a freight forward.

If only one piece of equipment is assigned to the order release, then all ship units will be planned on the equipment. However, in cases where there are multiple pieces of equipment and multiple ship units defined for the order, you can use this field to decide which ship units go into which equipment. You must assign equipment to each ship unit on the order to successfully build a shipment.

If you specified equipment on your order release, Oracle Transportation Management will plan the order release by itself. OTM does not check if equipment capacity is enough for the ship unit nor does it add any equipment to the equipment specified.

First, OTM checks if equipment is specified on any order release ship unit. If not, OTM will plan so to use specified on the order release. If yes, OTM will check if equipment is specified on all order release ship units. If not, you will get an error.

Then OTM will plan as specified on order release ship units and set the Equipment Fixed check box on the shipment. The check box Create Single Shipment on the itinerary controls whether OTM should create one or many shipments when OTM needs many pieces of equipment for a leg. The Equipment Assignment Type on an itinerary controls whether OTM should create separate pieces of equipment or reuse equipment for shipments on different legs.

Here's a flow of the process when planning an order release ( SU = ship unit):

If you specify equipment (for example, containers) on your order release but not on the ship units, OTM orders containers by weight and volume in descending order, groups ship units by commodity, and orders ship unit groups by weight and volume in descending order. Then OTM compares the number of ship unit groups with the number of containers.

For the same number of ship unit groups and containers, OTM assigns ship unit groups one by one to containers in the order release.

If the number of ship unit groups is greater than, or equal to, the number of containers, OTM will assign one ship unit to each container. If there is a ship unit group left, it will assign the next ship unit group until none left.

If the number of ship units is greater than 1 for the ship unit group, OTM will split off one ship unit from the ship unit group. If not, OTM will check if the ship unit count is great than one for the ship unit. If not, you will get an error because you have specified too many containers compared to ship units.

Impact on Shipment Actions

The following Shipment Actions are also affected by the addition of equipment to the order release.

• Change Service Provider actions group: Actions that convert one shipment into another such as Change Service Provider maintain the same equipment since the Equipment Fixed check box is selected on the shipment.
• Change Equipment Group: If you want to Change Equipment Groups, you must first clear the Equipment Fixed check box on the shipment.
• Change Shipment Route actions group: When you perform Split Shipment on a shipment that has the Equipment Fixed check box selected, Oracle Transportation Management keeps the existing equipment on the first shipment and assigns new equipment to the second shipment.