Using route schedules in TMS with CU10

Posted on behalf of Simon Juul.

Many companies have agreements with customers to deliver their orders on a regular basis, for example weekly deliveries. In order for TMS in AX to be able to support transportation routes executed regularly, a new feature for “scheduled routes” have been introduced with CU10 or separately from LCS with KB 3107317.

A scheduled route is a predefined route with predefined hubs (that being vendors, customers or warehouses) you execute regularly on a given schedule.

The new functionality for scheduled routes consists of:

  1. You can set up route plans on a defined schedule and build scheduled routes based on it.
  2. Use Load building workbench to propose loads based on the orders, using customer address and delivery date and the corresponding scheduled route.
  3. Use the Rate route workbench to manually assign loads to an existing scheduled route.

This blog post will take you through the necessary setup and how to create, process and use these route schedules.

Set up scheduled routes

First of all, we need to create a route plan starting from the warehouse where we ship from and with hubs that have the same zip code as the customers we are going to visit on the route:

Transportation management > Setup > Routing > Route plan

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The route plan for scheduled routes is a bit different than normal route plans as you need to specify “Origin hub” and “Destination hub” on each segment, as this is a fixed route and the customers are found by the zip code match. The route plan starts from our warehouse 61 and stops at a customer in the first sequence. A hub master has been setup with the same zip code as the customer in question. In the next sequence it goes to the next customer hub and so on until all customer hubs have been visited.

For this route plan we then need to setup the schedule for when it’s going to take effect. You do this by clicking Create route schedule. A new form is opened where you can specify on which dates and time the route is visited and with what mean of transportation (load template):

Transportation management > Setup > Routing > Route plan > Create route schedule

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On the Route schedule form, you have to specify the “actual start date and time” and “actual end date and time” as the period you want to have the scheduled routes generated for. You can specify the “Load template” which is being used as default on the Load building workbench and when you push the “Generate Routes” button a batch job will start generating routes based on the setup.

To be able to use scheduled routes a route guide has to be set up. For scheduled route plans you should use one Route guide and specify only the route plan, because the route plan used for scheduled routes is not open for any other criteria such as “Origin hub” and “Destination hub” as they are specified on all segments.

Transportation management > Setup > Routing > Route guide

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Use Load building workbench with scheduled routes

In the Load building workbench you are now able to select a scheduled route and build a load with all sales orders matching the zip code in any of the destination hubs in the route plan.

Transportation management > Inquiries > Load building workbench

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The Load building workbench has a new dropdown named Scheduled Route. You can only select scheduled routes that does not yet have any loads associated.

Selecting a scheduled route will disable the other criteria for Origin and Destination except the shipping from date, so you are able to find sales orders with an earlier ship date. You still have to select a load building strategy and have the possibility to use filter codes. The Load template will be defaulted to the one you selected on the route plan schedule or else you will have to specify one.

When proposing the load, the zip codes of each hub on the route will be matched to the zip codes of the Sales orders and the range of the “shipping date from” and “shipping date to” dates will be matched to the shipping date of the sales orders. There has been no change as to how selected load building strategy and load template will be used, it will work as in previous versions.

When pushing “Propose loads” you will see only one load with the sales orders matching the above criteria and the allowed quantity prescribed by the load building strategy and the assigned load template.

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If you select to create the load it will be assigned to the already created scheduled route and the transport is planned.

If you have sales lines in the “Not included” you have to either choose a bigger truck (Load template) or arrange another transport (maybe use load planning workbench for the remaining lines).

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Use Rate route workbench to manually assign loads to a scheduled route

If you want to manually assign a sales order to a scheduled route in the Load planning workbench, you can either create a new load if you want the first (date wise) Scheduled Route that does not have a load or you can “add to existing load” that already have a Scheduled Route assigned. When creating a new load and put it on a scheduled route:

Transportation management > Inquiries > Load planning workbench > Rating and routing > Rate route workbench

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There is a new menu saying “Scheduled Route”, which will show the first Scheduled Route without a load and with the shipping date closest to the sales order ship date. You can use the “assign” button to pick the actual Scheduled Route with the rates calculated. But you can also select “Add to existing route” to choose a scheduled route further out in future.