Location Manager: Identification

This page is accessed via:

Shipment Management > Location Manager
Operational Planning > Appointment Management > Dock and Yard Managers

Use the Location Manager to record and store information about locations that have not been predefined.

Locations are required when you:

Plan for a shipment
Establish rates for a shipment
Define itineraries
Create orders
Create a location template

Each location must be associated with a corporation and defined geographically. Store information about the type of transportation role the location fills, any accessorial or special services required, ways of communicating with that location, performing a credit check on an order against the location, and how transportation to and from that location can be routed.

Locations represent physical places to which an order can be delivered or from which an order can be picked up. They include airports, ports, rail ramps/yards, container pool locations, distributors, assembly points, plants, vendors, and more. A customer or a buyer can also be a location.

Note: Alternatively, you can enter locations automatically via integration.

Adding a Location

Identification defines basic location information such as ID, name and address. Also associate the location with a corporation.
Roles define the purpose of the location, as well as any associated accessorial charges or special services.
Routing specifies equipment groups or service providers associated with the location.
Communication and Remarks lists all contacts assigned this location and lets you enter any additional comments or remarks about the location for informational purposes.
Load/Unload Points are specific loading and unloading points assigned to a location. It provides a detailed view of the location giving the precise point to load and unload cargo.
Resource specifies the resources available for the location.

In order to provide accurate calculations, enter as much information as possible about a location.

Note: The property, glog.ExternalDistanceEngine.Geocode.UseGeoPostalPointData is used to enable or disable geocoding using the internal table GEO_POSTAL_POINT and add latitude/longitude to a location.

Using the Location Finder

In OTM, there is a general concept of profile that can be defined on different business objects like service provider, equipment group etc. This concept of profile helps you to identify and define groups of business entities/objects that have something in common. As part of this profile definition, it is possible to include or exclude common business entities. The concept of include or exclude (managed via compatibility attribute) is not honored/checked for the serving service provider ID and equipment group ID filtering attributes.

Identification

Create a location so that rates, itineraries, and orders are accurate. In addition, the information you enter can be used to send notifications about shipments, establish rate qualifications for a shipment, determine routing capabilities, and more.

The property glog.business.location.inactiveLocationSetting allows you to configure OTM to prevent inactive locations from being used as intermediate locations when Network Routing is enabled, or as arbitrary via points (Port-of-Load or Port-of-Discharge) regardless of the Order Routing Method.

Location ID uniquely identifies this location. For instance, if XYZ Corporation has three Pennsylvania locations, you may assign Location IDs of PA-01, PA-02 and PA-03 to them, or even PA-Philadelphia, PA-Pittsburgh, and PA-Allentown.

Alternatively, Oracle Transportation Management can automatically generate a Location ID for you. Leave the Location ID field blank, and the Business Number Generator creates an ID when you click the Finish button.
Note: You may want to include the name of the location in the Location ID so that it can be easily identified in other areas.

Note: Oracle Transportation Management assumes that a location with the same GID as a corporation is the master location for that corporation.
Location Name describes this Location.
The Corporation ID uniquely identifies this Corporation.
Note: A single Corporation ID may be linked to multiple locations.
The Location Description is the description you enter for a specific location.
Domain Name: Select in which Domain you want to create the location from the drop-down list.
The Use As A Template check box should be checked if you plan to use the location as a location template.
The Known Shipper check box indicates if a shipper is known or unknown. Shippers are considered unknown if they have not filed the appropriate paperwork and gained permission to ship goods on passenger flights. Goods transported by these shippers must be placed on cargo flights. Select Known Shipper if orders coming from this location can be qualified as known, and therefore transported on passenger flights.
Temporary: You can set up a temporary location to use for a short time. Select the check box to have all subsequent result pages display the location as temporary. This field is currently used for informational purposes only.
Status: The External Status Type and Status Value for this location are populated based on information assigned in Power Data. For locations, use external (status types and values to assign credit status and enable data transmission via integration). This only displays in Edit mode.
Select the Exclude from Route Execution check box if you do not want this shipment included when on route instance legs.
Region ID: If you are creating a consolidation pool or deconsolidation pool location, select or create the Pool Region this location covers. A region is a user-defined geographic area. The region may be of any size area you want that has meaning for your business.

Orders with destination locations in the region associated with a pool are candidates for the pool. They are sent to the pool and de-consolidated for delivery to the destination.
LTL Split: This check box indicates whether orders from or to this location are permitted to apply the LTL splitting logic. If the check box is not selected, the LTL splitting is disallowed for orders associated with this location.
Clear the Active check box to make this location inactive. This impacts planning order releases and order movements. When building shipments, the status of both the source and destinations locations are checked. Shipments will only be created when both locations of the order movement are active. If a source or destination location becomes inactive after the shipment is created, you will not be able to tender the shipment with an inactive stop location. The tendering actions that have location validation are Secure Resources, Secure Resources by Planner, Tender Shipment, Broadcast Tender and Spot Bid Tender.
If you are integrating with Warehouse Management System (WMS) and this location is in WMS, select the Warehouse Management Facility check box. Doing so assists the integration that occurs when you send a shipment and order data to WMS, if the ship from/ship to location is managed as a WMS facility in their application.
Multiple Matches: This field indicates if there are multiple matches for the location after the validation. Possible values are “N” and “Y”, and will only appear after the location is validated using an External Distance Engine. If the value is “Y”, it means that multiple matches were received and if the value is “N” it means that one or no matches were received when the location was validated.
External Distance Engine for Address Validation: This field contains the External Distance Engine that was used to validate the location.
Quality Level: This field contains the overall quality of the location, which indicates the accuracy of the location.

Reference Numbers

Use this section of the page to assign reference numbers to the location.

Address

The Address section is where you define the specific address information of the location. This information is used when calculating itineraries, defining lanes, qualifying rates and shipping goods.

Note: To use the zone information, the same zone must be assigned in a rate record. If a match is found between a source or destination location and a rate lane (and other factors also match), the rate would qualify for a shipment.

The Address Lines field contains the street level information for the location's address.
The Address Line Number field designates which line of the address text box contains the actual street address so when using the External Distance Engine, the correct street address is used.

For example, if you had this address in the text box, the line number would be 2.

Care of Someone
1234 Main St.

If you have this in the text box, the line number would need to be 1.
1234 Main St.
Suite 350
The Address Fixed check box is used when the address has been validated and known to be accurate. When selected, the address portion of the location will not be overwritten.
The City field contains the name of the of city that the location is in.
The Province Code field contains its abbreviated name of a state or province.
The Postal Code field contains the postal code of the location. In the United Sates, this would be the 5 or 5+ zip code of the location. Oracle Transportation Management will only read the number of digits defined in the Postal Code Length field in the Country Codes screen in Power Data.
County Qualifier is used when calling an external distance engine and using an address type of city instead of postal code. Often, there are two cities or towns with the same name in one state. For example, in Pennsylvania there is more than one town with the name "Newtown". If you do not combine the town with a postal code or a county, you may not get the result you want.

You can manually add values; however, you probably want to import them from the external distance engine that you are using. The county qualifier needs to correspond with the distance engine that you are using.
Zone: You can also define zones that are specific to a location and used to help qualify rates. For instance, a service provider may offer one rate for transport from the location to any of the southwestern states, and another rate for transport to the northeastern states. For the location, you could define Zone 1 to include all southwestern states. Alternatively, you could define Zone 1 to include specific SPLC (Standard Location Code) codes that may be used for rail transportation.
The Country Code is the standard three-letter abbreviation, as defined by ISO 3166 standards, to identify countries. The Country Code is required to ensure that rate offerings and web tendering functions work correctly.
The Address Valid field will contain an "N," "Y," or "U," and will only appear after the location has been created. If the value is "N," it means the Country Code, City, and Postal Code combination you entered is invalid. Oracle Transportation Management allowed it to be entered anyway because your Postal Code Validate Type is set to Warning. If the value is "Y," it means the Country Code, City, and Postal Code combination is valid. If the value is "U," it means that no validation took place because the validation process was not activated.
Note: The Location Manager includes functionality to validate the location data entered based on user-defined Country Code, City, and Postal Code combinations. These combinations are defined in the Postal Code Validate screen in Power Data. They are validated only if the Validate Postal Code check-box is checked in the Country Codes screen in Power Data, and the domain for each location has a Postal Code Validate Type set for it in the Domain Manager.
Time Zone: If you leave the Time Zone blank, Oracle Transportation Management determines what time zone a location is in and auto-populates it based on the address (country, state/province, city, postal code). Oracle Transportation Management has a database of worldwide time zones and the geography they cover. This includes differences in how some locales handle daylight savings time (Arizona does not honor it).

You can also select a time zone to ensure that all time restrictions are met. From the Time Zone drop-down menu, first find the region associated with the location you are trying to establish. For example, you know that Atlanta, Georgia is part of America. In this example, America would be your region and Atlanta would be your city. Alternatively, you may select a general time zone instead of a specific city, or leave the Time Zone field blank and allow Oracle Transportation Management to select the time zone automatically when you save the record.
Note: The difference between a general time zone such as EST and a specific city such as New York is that the New York time zone takes into account daylight savings time. To ensure accuracy, a location's time zone should be set to a nearby city.
The Province field contains the name of the state/province that the location is in. For example, in the United States, you can enter the full state name in the Province field (PENNSYLVANIA) and its abbreviated state name in the Province Code field (PA).
Enter a postal SPLC.
Enter a rail SPLC.
Enter a rail station code.
Enter a rail junction code.
Enter an ERPC.
Assign Latitude and Longitude (in degrees) for the location. Once assigned, these values are used to estimate distance from or to the location. If these values are not entered, Oracle Transportation Management uses latitude and longitude positions assigned to the specific US postal code, city, state, province or country entered when calculating distances to and from the location. If these do not populate automatically, you can run a planning process to populate them.

Coordinates format is the pair of latitude and longitude, with sign minus (-) for the direction south latitude and west longitude separated by a comma symbol ",". Here are some examples:
40.06404, -75.31539 West Conshohocken, PA
35.22050, 138.33984 Japan
Note: For non-US locations, you need to enter latitude and longitude to calculate distance.