Benefits compared to other concepts
Shipment Order as Supply/Demand
A shipment order can be used to require and carry out internal goods movement between sites and/or remote warehouses in the same company. In summary the shipment order can handle the following goods movement scenarios:
When remote warehouses are involved it could be either intra-site or inter-site in the scenarios above. For more information read About Remote Warehouse.
Once the shipment order is created and released, the execution of the goods movement is handled via the shipment and receipt process. Shipment order is supported for inventory parts, no parts and non inventory parts. The shipment order is connected to the shipment and the existing functionality for reservation, packing, picking, documents, delivery, sending dispatch advice is used and these functionalities will be dependent on the type of the part . Once the shipment order is delivered the material is visible in the internal order transit for the inventory parts. When the parts arrive at the destination, you can use the receipt process in order to register arrival, manage receipt, receive dispatch advice etc.
There are multiple concepts for moving goods, below the characteristics of those are described.
Transport Task and Move Inventory Part:
Transport task and move inventory part can be used to move parts between sites and/or remote warehouses. However it will be more beneficial to use more for internal stock movement within the four walls of the building. The reason for this is that there is not any shipment and receipt process to handle elements like hand-over/delivery, transit and receipt. Besides this concept requires that the material is available in stock, there is no possibility to require material to be moved in advance.
Distribution Order and Inter-Site Order:
This concept is used when there is an internal trade involved between sites including basic data for internal customers, internal suppliers, sales parts etc. This concept can not handle goods movement when there are remote warehouses involved.
This is the summary of the benefits with shipment order compared to the other concepts:
For more information about movement of parts in general, read About Moving Parts between Locations.
The shipment order consists of header and lines which can have the following statuses: Planned, Released, In Progress, Closed or Cancelled. Initially the status will be Planned.
In the header you define when the goods should be sent via the wanted receipt date which then will be default to the lines. In addition you specify from which site or remote warehouse, as well as to which site or remote warehouse the material should be delivered. Furthermore you can specify the delivery information e.g. ship via, forwarder, shipment type, lead times. Default values can be automatically fetched at order entry from different places depending on specific delivery scenario. See respective field description for details about the fetching hierarchy.
Once you have created a header you can add shipment order lines. In the lines you enter which parts (inventory part / no part) and how much of the part that you want to move. You can also define when the goods movement should be done. The wanted receipt date and lead times from the header will be the default and back calculation happens from that date based on lead times. You can manually change dates and lead times. Date and lead times can be further explored by reading about lead times.
If desired, you can do manual reservation of the shipment order line for inventroy parts. Note that availability control could be used in addition for shipment order.
When you are done you can release the shipment order to status Released. This means that the shipment order is ready for further execution in the shipment. During execution of the shipment order the status will be in In Progress. Once everything is received into stock the status will be Closed.
Another approach of creating a shipment order is to initiate the move for parts or a handling units in stock. The parts or handling units will then be added to a new shipment order as reserved. The quantity will be consolidated into the shipment order line: based on part, condition code, configuration ID, ownership, owner, demand code and reference and project activity. This approach can be used in instances where, you know which parts or the handling units that are required to be transported between a site and/or a remote warehouse.
The move with shipment order can be initiated for material stored in the following location types: picking, arrival or QA. From picking location available stock can be included.
When moving from location type arrival and QA, the purchase order r eceipt will be added as demand code and reference on the shipment order line. The selected parts or handling units will be excluded from the purchase order receipt and will be added back to the purchase order receipt in the new location once the shipment order is received. This is useful when you are doing the purchase arrival in one address and then need to do a transportation to another address where the ultimate receipt should be done.
Shipment order for the No part / Non-Inventory part will be initiated from the receipt and the purchase order receipt will be updated as the demand code. When the shipment order is created, the status of the shipment order header will be updated as ‘Planned’ status and the shipment order line status will be updated as ‘In-progress’. During delivery and receipt process no inventory transactions will be recorded.
Once the shipment order is released it can be connected to a new or existing shipment in the following ways:
For the first two ways above, all rules defined in the shipment type will be considered. This involves how lines are consolidated into shipments, if connection to new or existing shipment will happen etc. The third way is more of a true manual connection where you can override these rules.
When the shipment order is connected to the shipment the outbound delivery process can continue and and below are the main actions and these actions will depend on the inventory part or no part or non-inventory part.
For more information read more in about shipment.
At delivery of the shipment the material is under transportation and can be tracked. The following information can be seen when in transit:
Note that this is the same internal order transit handling that we have for multi-site orders.
When the goods arrive the inbound receipt process can be used for the shipment order to do actions like:
For more information read more in about arrival and receipt.
The shipment order is a required goods movement between locations, therefore it is considered from a supply and demand perspective as well. The shipment order will contribute with the following supply and demand elements:
This implies that the same shipment order can appear both as a supply and demand when it is intra-site. The date will often differ as there is a lead time involved.
These supply and demand elements will be considered in:
Note that you have the option to consider a remote warehouse as being not nettable. This is achieved by having a default part availability control ID on the remote warehouse, that is not nettable. This implies that from a supply and demand perspective the material is dedicated for usage within the remote warehouse and will not be a supply/demand outside of the remote warehouse. For example if you have a shipment order from a site to a not nettable remote warehouse in the same site, then you will only see the demand part from a planning perspective and this could be basis for generating supply if not enough stock. This is for instance beneficial if the remote warehouse is a service van and the material is dedicated for coming jobs, however you want to demand material from the outside. Read About Remote Warehouse for more information.
Note that when a shipment order is moving material from arrival and QA location i.e. demand code is purchase receipt, then the following exceptions apply to the supply and demand elements:
When you execute the shipment order a set of inventory transactions are created to cover all the goods movement scenario:
| Transaction Code | Transaction Description | |
| INTRA-SITE | SHIPODWHS- | Deliver shipment order to a warehouse in the same site |
| SHIPODWHS+ | Receive shipment order from a warehouse in the same site | |
| INTER-SITE | SHIPODSIT- | Deliver shipment order to a site in the same company |
| SHIPODSIT+ | Receive shipment order from a site in the same company |
Above transactions are generated when a shipment order is delivered and received. Apart from that INTORDTR transaction is generated when a shipment order is delivered in inter-site scenarios.
When you undo a shipment delivery for a shipment order the following set of inventory transactions are created to cover all the goods movement scenario:
| Transaction Code | Transaction Description | |
| INTRA-SITE | UND-SHPODW | Undo delivery of shipment order to a warehouse in the same site |
| INTER-SITE | UND-SHPODS | Undo delivery of shipment order to a site in the same company |
Apart from that UNINTORDTR transaction is generated when a shipment order delivery is undone in inter-site scenarios.
Below transactions are generated when a shipment order receipt is cancelled:
| Transaction Code | Transaction Description |
| UNR-SHPOD- | Reverse Shipment Order internal transfer - Receipt |
| UNR-SHPOD+ | Reverse Shipment Order internal transfer - Issue |
| UNR-SHPODW | Reverse the receipt of a Shipment Order from a warehouse in the same site |
| UNR-SHPODS | Reverse the receipt of a Shipment Order from a site in the same company |
A Shipment Order that has the same site as Sender and Receiver has been generated automatically from Work Task Material line(s) with Delivery Method Pick Up. At creation the receiving Remote Warehouse is not known but it should still be possible to process the Shipment Order and Shipment in the central warehouse, hence the receiver is temporarily set equal to sender site. It is possible to perform all actions until status Completed but Delivery cannot be done until the work assignment for the corresponding Pickup Task has been started. At that point the receiver will be automatically changed to the default remote warehouse for the task assignee, for both Shipment Order and connected Shipment. For more information read About Pickup Task.
When a Shipment Order should be delivered and received at the same time, eg. as a pickup for a Remote Warehouse van, it's possible to use a Shipment Type that has been configured to do so. If you enable setting Automatic Receipt for the Shipment Type then when used and Delivery command is run for a Shipment, a receipt will also be triggered and the Shipment Order will be closed. For a Remote Warehouse, this requires that Default Receive Case for Inventory Part has been configured and a matching Default Location has been entered. In addition, message class DESADV needs to be set up on Company level since Dispatch Advice is used to handle the transfer.
Below is a summary of current limitations for the shipment order. For now, the shipment order doesn't handle:
In addition note that the shipment order doesn’t support goods movement between companies.