[ianlo]

Hi everyone,

I would like to find out if anyone is using OTM solely for domestic ground transport. I would like to know:

1) Are you aware if a Single Shipment - Single Equipment approach is the best way to model domestic ground transportation.

2) What is the model that you have implemented?

FYI, we are using OTM for a domestic FTL ground transportation and we have modelled our business as Single Shipment - Multiple Equipment (equipment = truck) to represent a single shipment being delivered in unison by several trucks.

Appreciate your kind comments on the above.

Thanks!

[AlejandroBarba]

Hi Ianlo,

We use OTM for planning domestic ground shipments but we also receive SAWs for Ocean movements.

For our domestic ground shipments, we are taking the approach of single equipment per shipment. The primary reasons for choosing this approach were;
- The multiple equipments (trucks) may not be departing or arriving at the same time
- Therefore, the status updates are easier to manage when you have single equipment per shipment
- The Invoice Settling process was simplified too by providing our carriers a simple rule "one invoice per shipment / equipment"
- Visibility; it was also more visual for our end-users to have one equipment per shipment

For ocean moves, we opted to take the multiple equipments (containers) per shipment approach; the containers are shipped together from the origin port to the destination port and some of the costs are calculated at the shipment level.

Hope this helps,

Alejandro B.

[ianlo]

Hi Alejandro,

Thanks for your reply! Thats good to know! My modeling was based on the same constraints you had for ocean shipments - only now each equipment represents a truck.

1) The billing needed to be captured at the shipment level
2) Technically all the trucks are always on standby and will leave at the same time as it is a single move from warehouse to factory.

I was being told by Oracle that the only correct way to model ground transport is Single Shipment - Single Equipment. Is this true in your opinion?

Ian

[AlejandroBarba]

Hi Ian,

You have a very interesting situation where a "convoy" shipment with multiple trucks that travel together from origin to destination.

I can only speculate the reasons why Oracle stated that Single Shipment - Single Equipment was the only approach for ground transportation. Probably it could be related to issues integrating to other systems (even tendering) or the workflow parameters but I guess Oracle should be able to provide you a better answer so I would encourage you to ask Oracle and test your approach thoroughly.

Thanks,

Alejandro B.

[ianlo]

Hi Alejandro,

Thanks for listening! Unfortunately for us, Oracle does not recommend the Single Shipment - Multiple Equipment model for ground transport. They said that it was to be modelled as Shipment Groups.

The thing is that there is a problem when dealing with Shipment Groups and how do we group each shipment together dynamically to represent a convoy.

As it is, there are not many functionalities around the Shipment Group object - hence, in moving to the model recommended by Oracle we expect more issues with this model.

Still we will give it a try but we are not very confident that this is the correct approach.

Thanks,
Ian