container scenarios

[former_member193027]

Hi,

We are currently working with a client where the container counts, locations etc are analysed by the container liners in their  respective portals.

In order to have such visibility in SAP landscape, whats the best approach to integrate and have the above info from the ocean liner portals to SAP EM. Do you suggest to integrate the portals with CP?

[Former Member]

Hi Dipak,

The best way would be to use Carrier Collaboration portal. When you say "visibility in SAP landscape" I am assuming you mean Shipper's SAP landscape.

Thanks,

Deb

[former_member193027]

yes you are correct in your understanding.

If we use CP can you inform me in that case how will the carriers can have an access since they are not connected to any SAP landscape. Also by using CP, carriers can in that case do not have to update their portal which they have been using for ages?

[Former Member]

Hi Dipak,

Refer to the architecture below.

The SAP TM collaboration portal is another consumption channel of existing SAP TM back-end functionality. The back-end users of the company hosting the portal (customers of SAP TM = Shipper) are working in the SAP TM Web Dynpro application to tender their freight orders or to create freight invoices for example.

These documents (RFQs) can be accessed by the portal user of the carrier (business partner of the SAP TM customers) in the SAP TM collaboration portal via internet. It can be accessed through the internet from a desktop or tablet browser and enables the carrier to respond to freight requests for quotations.

Thus, for the carriers to have access they do not need to have SAP system landscape.

However, they would need user licenses and security of those users have to be maintained by the shipper.

Thanks,

Deb

[former_member193027]

Thx for the explanation.

One last question, for rail companies, can the wagon monitoring etc lying in the rail premises can also be achieved by using CP?

[Former Member]

Hi Dipak,

Yes, it should be possible.

If I understand your scenario right, say the shipper has set up the event tracking based on the rail wagons. Now all the events (expected and actual) for the rail wagon should be seen on CCP.

The CCP can be viewed both by the shipper and rail company.

So, it should be possible.

Thanks,

Deb

[former_member193027]

Hi,

Thx for that. If the rail companies wants to monitor the rail wagons do we consider it as std part of resource tracking capability of EM?

If the rail wagons are empty in that case will the tracking can still be done or achieved by EM? Also currently we are using wagon No as tracking in rail portal, how we can achieve this in EM?

[former_member186607]

Hi,

there is one standard scenario available to track resources (which are defined as master data in SAP TM)  in SAP EM (see http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-49069 for more details). If that fits your requirements, you can use it to track rail wagons. If not, you can create your custom scenarios to track the rail wagons. If you want to use the wagon number as tracking ID, you can do this. Why not? And, of course, the rail wagons can be tracked no matter if they are loaded or empty.

Best regards, Daniel

[former_member193027]

Hi,

Thx Daniel.

In case we use the wagon No to be used as a tracking ID do we need to use preprocessing functionality to convert the wagon No to TOR ID

[former_member186607]

Hi,

so, you do not want to track the rail wagon, but you want to track the related freight document in TM in the end? Is that correct? Or do you want to track both (= EH for the rail wagon and EH for freight order)?

If you want to have EH representing the resource (rail wagon) and from there propagate the events to the related freight document, you can also use standard activity TM_MAINTAIN_EXEC_INF with activity parameter REPLACE_TRXID: By using this you can first process the event message for the resource EH (tracking ID = rail wagon no) and then propagate this event to the related freight document in TM. You only have to know the TOR ID - for this there is no standard solution available.

Best regards, Daniel

[former_member193027]

Actually the primary objective is to track the rail wagon.We are currently thinking of the way how to fetch the TOR ID of the rail freight order. Do you suggest what can be the best solution to have this info?

[former_member193027]

Hi Gurus,

Will really appreciate the inputs here. Can I confirm that  activity parameter REPLACE_TRXID will help in the tracking of rail wagons ( TOR ID as its rail freight orders)  if I receive the tracking document as delivery document No?

If no, kindly advise how delivery document No can be converted to rail freight order No to track within EM?

[Former Member]

Hi Dipak,

Why do you want to replace the tracking id !!

I can suggest that during creation of FO, use the "tracking Id extractor" to create delivery number as another tracking id. You can get the delivery number in the DTR of the FO. Check LT_TOR_ITEM table.

Thus your freight order number event handler will have multipe tracking ids.

And then you can report events using either delivery no or FO number.

Thanks,

Deb

[kevin_wilson2]

Dipak,

Always be carful about changing tracking IDs. You only need to do that in very special circumstances and this is not one of them. If you are looking at tracking the Freight Order and it's related Rail Cars then you need 2 EH types, 1 for the FO and 1 for the Rail Car.

You would need to have a tracking ID for the railcar that makes sense - It can't just be the ID of the car itself as it will end up with too many events for the life of the railcar.

What we did at another railcar company is define an EH that pertained to a "Trip". Each trip was unique and was associated with 1 or more rail cars and Freight Orders. That way you can get visibility to your goods moving on individual railcars for a particular trip.

Thought I would throw that out there as another way of looking at it.

Hope that helps

KEvin

[former_member186607]

The activity parameter REPLACE_TRXID of activity TM_MAINTAIN_EXEC_INF can be used to propagate the event to the related freight document in TM, if the tracking ID of the event message is NOT the TOR ID - as in your example the rail wagon number. The gap you have to close in your project is how to determine the related TOR ID. If you have this available as a parameter in the rail wagon EH or in some custom table (then maybe enrich the event message with this information in preprocessing), you can use this.

Best regards, Daniel

[former_member193027]

Hi Daniel,

a) Currently we are planning to have the TOR ID as a parameter.In that case I hope the preprocessing logic and the rule set activity speciifed by you both should eb required in that case and hence  should be able to meet the requirement.Kindly correct me if I am correct in the understanding?

b) However as per Deb suggestion the concept of multiple tracking ID is also interesting. Whats your opinion on this option also?

Also the business is interested  to track event “Location of railcars” i.e. where railcar is located in certain time and this data is provided by service provider in excel format in current AS-IS. I hope the option a,b will meet this business requirement also.

[former_member186607]

Hi,

a) if you always have the currently assinged TOR ID as a parameter, you can access this directly with metadata tag for activity REPLACE_TRXID, e.g. <INFO-ZPARAM> if the TOR ID is stored in an info parameter with name ZPARAM.

b) if you go with variant a) you will have in the end one event message for the rail wagon (with tracking ID rail wagon number) and one event message for the freight order (with tracking ID TOR ID, which will be send from TM) - the prerequisite is that you always know the relation between rail wagon and TOR, which you want to store in the parameter. This will also be robust when a reprocessing of all the event messages is done (due to changes of an event handler). If you work with additional tracking ID you really have to be careful, that you restrict the validity of these tracking IDs to the correct time frame. I guess the approach with additional tracking IDs is maybe more error-prone.

Do you want to have an update on the freight document in TM as well in case "Location of railcar" event is sent? Or what is the connection between the points discussed above and this requirement?

Best regards, Daniel

[former_member193027]

Hi,

Yes you are correct, the business wants an update in the rail freight order document.

[former_member186607]

So what kind of update this should be then?