item level parcel Tracking with external carriers through AII

[Former Member]

Hi folks,

I am new to AII and am trying to explore the possibilities with the tools at hand.

With flexible delivery processing, we have tight control over the goods statuses across customer and supplier. For example, EM would let the customer know that the goods left the warehouse and are on their way.

Suppose I would like to integrate this information with the parcel tracking service of external carriers. The web services and web based tools such carriers offer are surprisingly immature. Some "global" companies are not able to provide seamless information, every carrier has their own standard and some do not provide public interfaces which could be used for customer-level tracking in a useful way (eg requiring authentication credentials of the warehouse clerk requesting the delivery).

I am wondering whether AII could be enabled to orchestrate this information flow. If an appropriate EDI format would exist, the carriers could be requested to update AII on shipment item level with any new statuses through EDI. Now it's up to the supplier to present the information to the customer as need be. This would remove inconsistencies as mentioned above.

Does this sound like a viable idea, are there EDI messages available for the task at hand and do you know of companies having successfully implemented something like this?

cheers & thanks,

Andi

[Former Member]

Hi Andi,

let me try to define your problem statement: lack of visibility as the asset moves across the value chain.

I believe you want to have supply chain visibilty as the asset moves.

why would you want to use AII to orchestrate the data capture part? Do you want to RFID enable the tracking. If someone wants to manually update the status of the asset movement then you might as well update Event Management system directly. In EM you can identify the Application object for the asset which you want to track accordingly the EM relevant events can be set and captured by EM.

This is easier said than done. EM can receive the data in desired format and relevant BAPIs can be called to capture the event information.

But the answer to your question is Event Management if the asset movement is not RFID enabled.

I am not sure how far i am able to address your problem statement.

Thanks and regards,

Amit Deshpande

[Former Member]

Hi Amit,

thanks for trying to tie in!

You are right in assuming that I mixed up the purpose of AII and EM. This is about making EDI-based information accessible to all partners involved, and therefore a case for EM.

Probably it helps if I re-state my thoughts. The supplier sends an ASN to the goods recipient. Afterwards, the goods are transported by a logistics provider based on a transport order. Question is, how can the intermediate delivery statuses of the provider be captured and published? Web UIs of the Providers with a tracking URL seem a very unreliable way of doing it.

I figured that IDoc IFTSTA seems to be the correct form for this kind of information to flow back from the carrier to the supplier and from there to the recipient.

Does it seem to be a viable option to incorporate the carrier data into EM for tracking purposes?

Cheers & Thanks, Andi

[Former Member]

Hi Andi,

I believe answer to your question is Transportation visibility scenario in Event Management. I think you can find out that scenario at http://service.sap.com/scm

I am not sure sure about the IDOC but yes providing tracking URL of the logistics provider may not seem best possible answer. But with EM if you are able to capture the events at provider then those can be exposed through web communication layer of EM to the concerned person with the limited view about the events of his interest.

Thanks and regards,

Amit Deshpande

[Former Member]

Hi,

you are right, this is going into the right directly. Only hitch: in the out of the box scenario, carrier updates happen manually through the web. This is hardly practical.

Would you know how I could incorporate additional EDI based information into EM? Above mentioned IDoc seems to be the right form for carrier updates. I couldnt find any development & extension guide as for many other SAP components.

cheers & thanks, Andi

[Former Member]

Hi Andi,

I am trying to think in some other direction.

The Event Managment captures the event through a BAPI.

I think this BAPI can be exposed as Webservice to capture the event. Since its webservice it will follow the XML standard. The WSDL can be used by the event communicating application to report the event.

I am not confident about the feasibility of this solution.

You can capture additional data for the event as Info parameters through the BAPI.

Thanks and regards,

Amit Deshpande

[Former Member]

Hi Amit,

this looks like an alternative indeed. How could I find out which particular BAPI is used?

What the best solution is may depend on whether there is further need for EDI based data exchange between supplier and carrier, eg for the transport order. Another thing EDI provides which you have to bother yourself with web services is Quality of Service.

It would be great to hear about real-world experiences in this area but it seems there's not so much to share yet. I'll share in this thread in case I come across anything. Thanks, Amit, for the good discussion!

cheers, andi