Service Provider Assignment and Resource Management

This topic describes how OTM assigns Service Providers and Equipment Groups to shipments based on equipment availability and carrier contractual commitments.

Assigning Carrier and Equipment

This topic describes how Capacity Limits and Carrier Commitment are used to select a service provider and equipment group for a shipment.  (Carrier Commitment includes Commitment Allocation and Commitment Count.)  There are many other factors in the selection of service providers and equipment groups for shipments, including cost, rate availability, transit time feasibility, order constraints, itinerary constraints, and commodity constraints.  These other factors are all considered within the shipment building logic when building each shipment.  The Capacity Limits and Carrier Commitment constraints, however, require a more holistic consideration, because the way one shipment is assigned can affect how another shipment should be assigned.

There are two options for assigning service providers and equipment groups to shipments during shipment creation (either in bulk plan or in shipment creation actions):

• Service Provider Assignment logic:  This is used when the PLAN SHIPMENTS WITH CARRIER COMMITMENT planning parameter is set to true.  This option will handle both Capacity Limits and Carrier Commitment, and is recommended whenever either or both are in use.
• Legacy Carrier Resource Optimizer logic:  This is used when the PLAN SHIPMENTS WITH CARRIER COMMITMENT planning parameter is set to false.  This option will handle only Capacity Limits, but not Carrier Commitment.  This option is recommended only when there are no Capacity Limits or Carrier Commitment.

Service Provider Assignment

When enabled, the Service Provider Assignment (SPA) logic takes the shipments built by the Planning logic, and assigns service providers and equipment groups based on the rated cost, Capacity Limits, and Commitment Allocation.  It will run after Container Optimization logic and Multi-Stop logic have determined what orders will go together on what shipments, and does not undo these order and shipment consolidation decisions. 

In the absence of Capacity Limits and Carrier Commitment, a shipment will usually be assigned to the least cost service provider and equipment group.  However, resource availability represented by Capacity Limits will limit the count of equipment of particular types, potentially preventing some shipments from getting their least cost assignments.  Likewise, carrier contracts represented by Carrier Commitments may require that a certain proportion of the shipments be assigned to particular service providers even if these are not the least cost assignments.  Accordingly, the SPA logic will consider the service provider options and equipment options of each shipment, and will consider all of these options simultaneously in determining an optimal solution that will minimize cost while also satisfying these constraints.

There are various tuning parameters that affect how the SPA logic will solve this assignment problem, including the following:

• The logic treats shipments with different levels of importance based on order priority, quantity, and other factors, depending upon the settings of these planning parameters:
  • SHIPMENT PREFERENCE CRITERIA
  • USE PRIORITY IN SPA
  • SPA CONSTRAINED ORDER EQUIPMENT TYPE PROFILE 
• The logic will honor Carrier Commitments only for shipments original built with a mode compatible with the profile defined in MODE PROFILE ID FOR CARRIER COMMITMENT.
• The logic will consider different port options for shipments with arbitraries is the parameter SPA EVALUATE VIA POINTS AND VOYAGES is turned on.
• The logic will limit the number of service providers assigned to shipments with the same source and destination locations, based upon the settings of the SPA GROUP parameters:
  • SPA GROUP BY ORDER LOCATIONS
  • SPA GROUP MODE PROFILE ID 
• The logic will consider whether to choose shipment start dates based on Capacity Limits, based upon the settings of the following parameters.  This is described in more detail in the next section.
  • SPA MAX DAYS TO CONSIDER
  • SPA TIME CHANGE POLICY

Service Provider Assignment Time Window Functionality

OTM allows you to feasibly change the shipment's start date inside the service provider assignment logic to improve the solution quality when only limited resources are available (capacity limit). This can be useful when the demand outstrips supply. Generally, OTM takes shipments with pre-assigned start and end times and assigns the least cost service provider with regard to the provided time window and equipment. However, there are cases where the pre-assigned shipment start date on the shipment keeps OTM from finding the optimal solution. For example, you have two identical order releases with no time constraints and two service providers. One of the service providers is cheaper, but it has a capacity limit that allows only one shipment per day. The other one is more expensive, but it is unlimited. For this scenario, the optimal solution from a cost perspective would be to generate two shipments on two consecutive days. However, because of the pre-assigned start and end time, OTM chooses to use both of the service providers and makes two shipments on the same day. To avoid a scenario like this, OTM allows you to shift the shipment start date by setting the following parameters.

• SPA MAX DAYS TO CONSIDER: This parameter determines how many extra possible start days,OTM will consider for each shipment, subject to capacity limits. When using this parameter, it is best to set this no larger than needed, as it can have a performance impact. For example, if two extra days is sufficient to find the right resources, then there is no reason to set it higher than 2.
• SPA TIME CHANGE POLICY: This parameter provides priority level control about whether OTM should encourage delaying the shipment start date in order to take advantage of a cheap but capacity-limited service provider.

Following are some scenarios along with the appropriate parameter settings:

1. The only available carrier has capacity limits, and the start dates of some shipments must be delayed in order to be able to schedule all the shipments successfully.
   Set the SPA MAX DAYS TO CONSIDER to be a sufficient value, SPA TIME CHANGE POLICY does not affect the solution, as there is only one available carrier.
2. There is an expensive carrier with unlimited capacity. You would like to change the shipment with any priority to start dates in order to use the cheap carrier.
   Set SPA MAX DAYS TO CONSIDER to be a sufficient value and set SPA TIME CHANGE POLICY to Encourage Time Change.
3. There is an expensive carrier. You would like shipments to start on their earliest start dates unless capacity is used up.
   Set SPA MAX DAYS TO CONSIDER to be a sufficient value, Set SPA TIME CHANGE POLICY CHANGE to Discourage Time Change.

4. Orders have different priorities (low, medium, high) and capacity limits. You want the higher priority orders to be shipped on their earliest start date and push medium and low orders to later days.
   Set the SPA MAX DAYS TO CONSIDER to be a sufficient value, Set SPA TIME CHANGE POLICY TO Discourage Time Change for High Priority Shipment. Note that, when Priority is introduced, OTM will always assign capacity to the higher priority shipment before the lower priority shipment.

Carrier Resource Optimization

When SPA is not enabled, the legacy Carrier Resource Optimization logic is used.  It considers Capacity Limits but not Commitment Allocation.  This logic happens right before shipments are persisted, and considers the shipments one at a time in order to honor capacity limit constraints.  If a shipment is assigned to an equipment type that is no longer available, the logic has the ability to change to a second-choice service provider.  The behavior of this logic is controlled in part by the setting of the RERATE ALL SHIPMENTS AFTER BULKPLAN parameter.

Re-rate Shipments after Bulk Planning

During the bulk plan/multi-stop process, Oracle Transportation Management does not evaluate all equipment groups in each equipment group profile due to performance concerns. It only evaluates the best-fit equipment group, calculates cost and service time, and then compares the results from other equipment group profiles to choose the least cost feasible one. Therefore, better equipment options may be missed. In the above example, 40FT Dry Van is cheaper than 28FT Dry Van, but it is not the best fit equipment, so it will be thrown out.

Oracle Transportation Management extends the reassigning carrier resource functionality from carriers that have capacity constraints to all carriers to optimize the equipment assignment. The parameter " RERATE ALL SHIPMENTS AFTER BULK PLAN" controls this behavior.

• If set to TRUE, Oracle Transportation Management re-rates all shipments regardless of its capacity usage.
• If set to FALSE, only re-rate shipments of which carrier capacities are no longer available (over limit).

• Note: Oracle Transportation Management only evaluates the rates that have the same Rate Service ID as the rate that was previously assigned during bulk plan process and since Rate Service ID remains the same service time is not recalculated.

Prioritize Carrier Selection for Shipments

The parameter, CARRIER CAPACITY WEIGHTING FACTOR, can be used to calculate the weighted significance of carrier selection. The higher the value, the more significant the first choice carrier is; the lower the value, the more significant the second choice carrier is.

General Process of Re-Rate Shipment Graph Collection

1. Bulk plan the order.
2. Sort all shipments in shipment graph collection by carrier capacity weighted rank.
3. Iterate each shipment and reallocate resource to shipments in decreasing order of weighted rank.
4. Commit and save the shipment graph to database.

Capacity Limits

Capacity Limits will apply to a shipment's equipment assignment only if the shipment's Rate Offering has the Track Capacity Usage flag selected,

Likewise, Capacity Limits will apply to a shipment only if the Capacity Group of the shipment's Rate Offering is used by some Capacity Limit.

When no Capacity Limit is set up for a combination of Capacity Group, lane, and equipment type, the logic will assume that there is unlimited resource capacity for that combination.

Note: Work Assignments and Capacity Limits should not be used together. Work Assignment logic uses Resource Schedules as the limited resource to be planned against, rather than capacity limits.

Shared Equipment Between Legs

Service provider assignment can use commitments to assign service providers to shipments on legs that share equipment with other legs. Note the following:

• When order movements on the other shared equipment legs are not already planned, then OTM will be able to choose equipment group as well as service provider.
• When order movements are being planned, and the corresponding order movements on the other shared equipment legs are already planned, then OTM will not be able to choose equipment group, since it has already been chosen on the other shared equipment legs. OTM will be able to choose service provider (from among the service providers that support the already-selected equipment group).
• When the order release is being planned, or when order movements for multiple shared equipment legs are being planned (but no shared equipment leg order movements are already planned), OTM has a limitation: it will only be able to choose the equipment group that it would have chosen without commitments. Thus, if the service providers with the commitments do not use the same equipment group set, OTM may not be able to plan according to the commitments, because its equipment group choice is limited, and the equipment group selection affects the carrier selection.

Multi-Pass Bulk Plan

Capacity Limits are honored by both Service Provider Assignment and Carrier Resource Optimizer.  Bulk Plan and other planning actions that create shipments cannot assign more resources to shipments than is allowed by Capacity Usage records.  Thus, it is possible that some would-be shipments will fail the assignment of service provider and equipment type, and so the orders on those would-be shipments will fail to plan.

It is possible, however, that some or all of these failed orders could have successfully planned onto different shipments that are able to use resources that are still available.  For example, the Container Optimization and Multi-Stop logic have consolidated orders onto ten shipments that all must use 53 Foot Trailers.  If there are only eight available 53 Foot Trailers, then only eight of the shipment will get the resources, and the orders on the other two shipments will fail to plan.  However, these failed orders could have been consolidated onto three 48 Foot Trailers, assuming such equipment are still available.

Multi-Pass Bulk Plan allows a bulk plan to reconsider the consolidation of these failed orders, and allow them to consolidate onto shipments that can use equipment that are still available.

• The Multi-Pass Bulk Plan is still a single bulk plan process.
• The parameters for enabling Multi-Pass Bulk Plan are:
  • MAX NUM REPLAN - the number of additional passes. 
  • CARRIER RESOURCE REASSIGNMENT TYPE - this will allow Multi-Pass Bulk Plan if set to a value that allows "do re-plan".
• Shipments are persisted to the database at the end of each pass, and capacity usages are updated. So that the next pass will use the updated capacity usages.
• The shipment consolidation logic will not use any equipment resources that are no longer available for the current pass
• A new bulk plan pass will try to plan only those orders that failed in the previous bulk plan pass.  It will not reconsider orders that have already planned successfully in previous passes for the current bulk plan.