SAP’s strategy for Transportation Solutions in SAP S/4HANA
Since the introduction of SAP S/4HANA® some of the previous modules/solutions available in SAP ECC became available through something called “Compatibility Packs”. A Compatibility Pack (CP) is a version of a standard SAP Business Suite software product that is compatible with SAP S/4HANA.
Compatibility packs:
- Cover functionality from SAP ERP core or line-of-business (LoB) or industry solutions
- Comprise the complete or partial scope of the related SAP Business Suite product
- Will be phased out in favor of other strategic solutions that may have similar functionality to that within the CP software and may have a separate license.
The latest change regarding the Logistics Execution - Transportation (LE-TRA) Compatibility Package is that it’s usage rights has been extended to the end of 2030 (see KBA 2269324).
To phase out LE-TRA, SAP S/4HANA introduced since its 1709 release what was known before as "Basic Shipping", now simply Transportation Management. Basic Shipping/Transportation Management is a reduced scope version of Advanced Transportation Management (AKA Professional Shipping) and does not require an additional license. It is worth to mention that Basic Shipping/Transportation Management is a subset of functionality of the full scope version Advanced Transportation Management and share the same configuration nodes and master data objects.
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Another main difference besides the scope is that Transportation Management (Basic Shipping) can only be deployed embedded in SAP S/4HANA. For a side-by-side deployment (AKA sidecar or decentralized) you'd need the full scope license of SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain for Transportation Management.
Transportation Management vs Advanced Transportation Management Scope
As stated before Transportation Management - Basic Shipping's goal was to provide the functionality that LE-TRA provided to the customer and its scope has been fit to maintain the same level of capabilities with few improvements like integration with SAP Logistics Business Network, freight collaboration option. There is still a little bit of work left to be done to achieve complete feature parity, however most of what you could do with LE-TRA can be achieved in some capacity with Basic Shipping.
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On the other hand, SAP Transportation Management as a product has greater functional capabilities compared to LE-TRA, offering order-based transportation planning, greater automation possibilities, analytics and reporting via CDS views, shipper and LSP process coverage among others. To get a more detailed list of what's included in the Basic scope please refer to the KBA 3056768.
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New in SAP S/4HANA 2020
Due to new functionality introduced in the SAP S/4HANA 2020 release, Transportation Management (in its Basic Shipping scope) has now gained new capabilities that weren't previously available.
Advanced Shipping and Receiving (ASR):
Introduced in the SAP S/4HANA 2020 FSP01 release, Advanced Shipping and Receiving simplifies communication between Transportation Management (TM), Extended Warehouse Management (EWM), Stock Room Management (STRM), Inventory Management and Physical Inventory (MM-IM), and Logistics Execution (LE) application components embedded in SAP S/4HANA.
It now manages the integration between SAP TM and the warehousing modules directly from the Freight Order (FO) object and allows for mixed and multi-warehouse scenarios from a single Freight Order in which some warehouse may use Stock Room Management and others Extended Warehouse Management.
As of the current release ASR supports warehouse lead processes and there are some scenarios in which it can be used with the basic scope of Transportation Management:
Embedded Scheduling
As of SAP S/4HANA 2020, SAP TM now includes a new embedded scheduling strategy which doesn't require communication to the external SCM Optimizer (vía RCCF calls), making it possible to utilize it with Transportation Management in its basic scope.
Both the new VSS_EMBED and previous VSS_DEF strategies try to solve the same scheduling problem. However, since the code/algorithms used by each one is different, the results given by each one could be different, although correct. The difference doesn't stop at code level, currently Embedded Scheduling doesn't support Scheduling Constraints defined in customizing (Planning > General Settings > Define Scheduling Constraints), so if you require modeling that kind of constraints then you'd still need an advanced license to be able to use the SCM Optimizer engine.
Summary
- Basic Shipping will know be known simply as Transportation Management and the full scope license will be known as Advanced Transportation Management.
- The usage rights for LE-TRA's compatibility pack has been extended to the end of 2030.
- Transportation Management (AKA Basic Shipping) provides functionality comparable to what LE-TRA offers without additional licensing costs.
- With SAP S/4HANA 2020 you can now take advantage of Embedded Scheduling and Advanced Shipping & Receiving (FPS01) with the basic scope.
If you'd like to learn more details about the topics covered in this blog please look into the following links for further information:
Product Assistance - SAP S/4HANA - Transportation Management (TM)
What's New Viewer - SAP S/4HANA - Delivery and Transportation
What's New Viewer - Advanced Shipping and Receiving
What's New Viewer - Enhancements for scheduling
Please make sure to follow the SAP Transportation Management tag for blogs to get great insights on this SAP solution. Also feel free give some feedback or ask some questions in the comments or to our growing community using the SAP Transportation Management tag.
Thanks a lot for reading.
Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA RIG team.
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