[otmrookie]

Hi all,

We're wondering how we should use OTM for our transportation department. Our current shipment planning model involve shipment planning(usually with multiple orders) to the pool centers, and once the shipments get to the pool centers they are broken down by order and delivered to customers. In short, we only have control of shipment planning up to the pool centers, from the pool centers onward the planning is taken care of by the LTL carriers that usually run the pool centers.

My question is what are the benefits of planning out the shipment all the way to the customers even though we have no control on the 2nd leg of the shipment(ie from pool center to customer) considering that we may have to maintain LTL rates or acquire CzarLite to do so. Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks for your help!

[bob_romijn]

Hi,

I don't know exactly what your requirements are, but we did more or less the same for these reasons:

- Total transit times and costs need to be considered and compared to Direct rates. We need to use the best way to ship it.
- Visibility reasons. We wanted to see who carried out the shipment.

Also we have only control up to the pool center. Once it is there, the carrier of the pool center perhaps uses another pool upstream or other carriers. We simply don't care, because they are free to do that.

Reasons that we didn't take into acount, but are very valid in some scenarios:

- Using freight settlement will use a shipment for receiving invoices. You want to have already a shipment to match it to, to make live a bit easier.
- If you want to approve invoices you need to have the rates in place for building a shipment.
- The pool carrier sends milestones back relating to his LTL shipment. You have to relate it to a shipment.

Be aware that you don't need to have complete rates in place for the second legs. It can also be a fictive rate. It all depends on the goals you want to achieve.

There will be several other reasons why you want to have it in place for particular customers.

I hope this helps a bit in your discission.