TMS - Routing and Hubs

Configuration for Route Scheduling

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Routing > Hub types

Hub types are setup to classify hubs in regards to of affiliation and function. Here, we set up 2 hub types - Internal Hub and Customer hub (external).

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Routing > Hub masters

Secondly, we will set up 4 hub masters - 1 hub master for the internal hub and 3 hub masters for the customer hub with the appropriate addresses assigned.

Internal hub:

Customer hubs:

a) Boston

b) Philly

c) Chicago

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Routing > Route plans

Afterwards, we will set up a route plan for the route from "Internal Hub - NYC" to "Philadelphia Customer Hub" to "Boston Customer Hub" to "Chicago Customer Hub" - short, our route will have 3 freight destinations

We specify the correct sequence and populate the origin and destination accordingly. Furthermore, we specify the shipping carrier and carrier service field (here: Truckcarrier and Truck). Additionally, we can specify the vendor account (here: ShippingCarrier vendor) as well as the person in charge for payment (means the party responsible for the freight costs - here: company).

Additionally, we specify the spot rates for each line item by clicking the spot rates button on the route plan details.

For Sequence 1:

For Sequence 2:

For Sequence 3:

After doing so, you can see the spot rates field is updated with 2 for each line item as we have 2 added charges per line item.

After completing this, we will leverage the edit hubs option/button on the route plan details to update the below.

The next step is setting up the route schedule - you can find the control on the Actionpane on the route plans form above. Here, we specify the start and end date for which timeframe we want this route scheduled for. We also specify the load template ID and the days of the week we want to plan this route for - after using the generate routes control on the routes tab, a batch job creates the routes accordingly - See below.

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Routing > Route guides

We still need to set up a route guide to leverage the above scheduled routes.

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Routing > Constraints

If we would like, we could now also set up additional constraints such as item XYZ can't be delivered to a specific hub. For example, in the below item A0001 is restricted from being delivered to the Philadelphia Customer Hub. We could also loosen the control here to simply a warning message - for now we leave it as is.

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Load building > Load Building strategies

Microsoft Dynamics 365 comes OTB with a load building strategy named “Volume-based load building strategy”. This strategy lets a user use the maximum values specified for height and weight in the load template, or override the settings by entering new values. If there are additional needs for load building strategies, a new class can be added via customization.

Navigation paths: Transportation Management > Setup > Load building > Load Building Templates

Lastly, we set up a load building templates that s used to automatically create loads based on specified parameters. Here we specify the full load load building strategy as well as specify the same site and warehouse as referenced in the route guides above. Similar in the AWM work template functionality, we can also specify a query to differentiate which load building template is leveraged for certain order scenarios and parameters.

Final Demo - Routing and Hubs

I created and confirmed 1 sales orders with 1 line to be shipped 5/17/21- See below.

Sales order 000968:

In order to now create a load for the above sales order lines and assign a route, we navigate to load planning workbench under Transportation Management > Setup > Load building > Load Building workbench. Here, we specify the load building strategy as well as the prior/above scheduled routes. After doing so, we leverage the propose loads button on the Actionpane.

D365FO proposes now to add the sales line into a new load. We confirm with "create loads" on the Actionpane.

Note: 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.

The load has been created and assigned to to the scheduled route.

From the loads form, the assigned route can be inquired:

Now, you can add additional sales order lines to the existing load if needed.