The Load Planning feature was designed to assist in determining when sales orders can be delivered to your customers and to improve the actual picking and loading of goods for subsequent delivery.
This is a fairly simple system enabling you to organise deliveries quickly and easily based on known routes. It does not attempt to optimize routes or monitor the actual delivery process.
Each customer, customer address or warehouse is assigned a route code which determines the usual delivery method for goods. A route delivery sequence or delivery distance can be specified to determine the order in which loads are delivered.
Each route has an associated delivery frequency (for example every 7 days) and the number of times a delivery may be made on a single day.
Against each load on a route, you define a maximum capacity for the load. This can be based on mass or volume or first reached (mass or volume). Loads are managed by initializing them for a specific period in the future.
A sales order is associated with a route and order lines are added to loads on the route. Loads can be viewed to determine the capacity used. Orders for the route can be viewed and order lines can be added or removed from load or moved between loads.
Several reports are available to assist in planning and monitoring loads. Picking lists and drivers' manifests can also be generated.
This task outlines the procedures you should follow to set up Load Planning.
Some of these steps are optional and depend on how you intend implementing Load planing.
Navigate to the Sales Orders Setup program.
Enable the Load planning required option and set the other options required under the Load planning section.
Navigate to the Sales Orders Setup program.
Indicate the Properties and Numbering method you require for Load planning.
Navigate to the Company Calendar program to define the working and non-working days for your company.
Navigate to the Load Transport program to define the types of transport you use to deliver goods to your customers.
Use the Employees program to optionally define the employees (e.g.drivers) responsible for delivering the loads on various routes.
Navigate to the Delivery Routes program to define your delivery routes. At least one route must be defined.
From the Browse on Delivery Routes program you can add multiple loads to each route based on the Basis of adding loads you defined in Sales Orders Setup.
Alternatively, you can use the Delivery Loads program to manually add individual loads to each route.
Navigate to the Customers program.
Against each customer, define the default delivery route code and delivery sequence number (or distance) to use for deliveries for that customer.
If a number of ship to addresses (delivery addresses) are assigned to the customer, then you can use the Multiple Ship to Addresses program to assign a default delivery route code to each of these addresses.
Navigate to the Warehouses program to define a default delivery route code and a default delivery distance or sequence number to use for Supply Chain Transfer deliveries to each of your warehouses.
This is only required if you process SCTs (see Sales Order Entry) and you want to include these in load planning.
Processes in the Load Planning module do not affect the General Ledger. In addition, no month end or year end processes must be performed for Load Planning.
Once you have configured the Load Planning module, ongoing maintenance consists of maintaining routes (adding, changing or deleting routes as required) and adding available loads to your routes.
When you use the Sales Order Entry program to process orders for your customers, you allocate each order line to a delivery load on a specific delivery route. This can be done manually or automatically depending on the Load planning options defined in the Sales Orders Setup program.
You use the Load Planning Delivery Load Maintenance program to view and maintain the order lines to be delivered on each delivery load. Order lines can be added to, or deleted from, a load. Alternatively, order lines can be moved between loads to optimally make use of the volume/mass available on each load.
You can generate the following reports:
Load Picking List - to assist in extracting the items from stock for selected delivery route(s) and date(s).
List of Orders for Loads - to track a specific sales order to a delivery route.
Drivers Manifest - to generate a list of customers to whom orders must be delivered on selected delivery routes.
Once the items have been delivered, you can use the Load Planning Delivery Load Maintenance program to move order lines which were returned or not delivered to other loads for later delivery if required. Alternatively, if the customer no longer requires the item(s), you can delete the order line from the load.
When all lines on a load are delivered, you use the Load Planning Delivery Load Maintenance program to set the load to a status of Complete.