SAP SD Route Routes are very important in Warehouse shipping activities.

In SAP systems, route has a vital role in Order to Cash Process. This blog post is basically to explain the concept of Route and Route determination in the Logistics Execution process and also provides important resource links at the end. Route is a fundamental basis to create and plan shipments in SAP systems and also a basis for selection of upcoming Deliveries. You can use routes to determine the itinerary (leg), means of transport like truck, train, plane or ship. Routes have generally fixed departure point (shipping point) and a destination point ( ship-toparty, ports etc.). Routes enable you to plan transport scheduling. Route determination criteria is a as follows 1) the country and transportation zone of the shipping point - Customization 2) the shipping condition - Default value based on Sales Document Type or from Customer Master of Sold-To Party 3) the transport group Default Value from Material Master 4) the country and transportation zone of Ship-To-Party - Default Value from the Customer Master of Ship-To-Party. 5) the Weight group ( if the route determination is carried out again at the delivery note level ) Customization The route determination takes place at the item level of sales order or of the stock transport order. When you create a delivery, the route is copied in to the delivery header. Before starting the route determination configuration, you must divide the locations of your customers into transportation zones for each country wide at IMG>Logistics Execution>Shipping>Basic Shipping Function>Routes>Route Determination>Define Transportation Zones Because the route determination depends on the transportation zone of the shipping point, you must assign the right transportation zone to shipping point .at IMG>Logistics Execution>Shipping>Basic Shipping Function>Routes>Route Determination>Maintain country and Transportation Zone for Shipping Point. Transport Groups are required based on the form in which material will ship like pallets or liquid form or container etc. at IMG>Logistics Execution>Shipping>Basic Shipping Function>Routes>Route Determination>Define Transport Groups.

If you want to consider weight of the delivery to determine new route determination at delivery then configure Weight Group. IMG>Logistics Execution>Shipping>Basic Shipping Function>Routes>Route Determination>Define Weight Groups. In order to maintain routes, start Tcode OVTC or SAP menu>Logistics>Logistics Execution>Mater Date>Transportation>Routes>Define Routes>Define Routes and Stages Once we finish all necessary steps and information, then we can configure a route determination IMG>Logistics Execution>Shipping>Basic Shipping Function>Routes>Route Determination>Maintain Route Determination Departure country and Zone with country of destination and receiving zone. Now we can see how sales order is going to determine the route. First we must maintain the relevant transportation zone( General data- Address tab) and shipping condition( Shipping tab) in the customer master of the relevant ship-to party. Now we must enter the sales order and the result could be route determined in the sales order.

Route Determination
The route determines the means of transport and the legs involved. It influences transportation scheduling. For example, the system can determine from the route that goods are to be sent by rail to Boston. Therefore, during transportation scheduling, it takes into account how far in advance loading space in the freight car must be reserved.

Criteria for Route Proposal in the Sales Order

A route can be determined for every order item. Determining the route in the sales order depends on the following factors: Country and departure zone of the shipping point Shipping condition from the sales order For example, it might have been agreed with the customer that the goods are to be delivered as soon as possible. Transportation group from the material master record (Sales/Plant Data screen) You can use the transportation group to group together goods with the same characteristics (for example, bulky goods or goods that must be transported in refrigerated trucks). Country and transportation zone of the ship-to party (Control screen in the customer master record)

If the ship-to party is changed in the sales order, the route is determined again for each item. Using the delivery type, you can control in Customizing whether the transportation scheduling is to be executed once again after a route change has taken place. The following figure shows how the route is determined in the sales order according to the data listed above.

Criteria for the Proposal of the Route in the Delivery

The shipping document type determines whether the route is determined again in the delivery. Since you only learn the exact weight of the delivery at the time of creating the delivery, it makes sense to determine the route again. For example, an overdelivery of goods could mean that the delivery is now too heavy to be delivered by air freight and must be conveyed by rail. It could also be that several partial deliveries are created for one sales order so that the total weight of the each delivery is now lower than the total weight that is recorded in the sales order. Thus, a smaller truck than originally planned can be used for the delivery. For this reason, a weight group is used as an additional factor in determining the route. The weight group is determined on the basis of the total weight of the delivery. You can manually overtype the route that is determined by the system in the delivery. Unlike the sales order where a route can be defined for each order item, the route applies to all items in the delivery. The following figure shows all factors that the system takes into account when it determines the route in the delivery.

Consistency Check
Once a new route has been determined in the delivery, the system can check whether the route determined in the order item and the route found for the delivery are consistent. In the Customizing application, you can define a consistency check for each shipping document type.

Maintain Route Determination

In this activity, you can set the route determination per country of departure/departure zone and country of destination/receiving zone in the sales order or delivery. In the sales order, the route determination is dependent upon the following factors: Country of departure/departure zone Country of destination/receiving zone Shipping conditions Transportation group

The above list plus the weight group factor make up the factors relevant for determining the delivery route determination. To maintain new combinations of departure countries/zones and destination countries/zones, you can: Enter countries and zones into the table manually by choosing New entries. Select all possible combinations for a shipping point and a particular destination country, for example, by choosing New entries and then Enter further combinations. Simply enter the desired shipping point and destination country in the dialog box and choose All combinations . The departure zone and all destination zones defined for the shipping point and destination country you specified then appear automatically. If you only specify the shipping point, all destination zones appear for all countries in the table.

In the screen displaying departure countries/zones assigned to destination countries/zones, you can position the cursor on a shipping point, departure country, departure zone, customer, destination country or destination zone. The system then goes to the line corresponding to the cursor position (shipping point 001, for example). If the desired entry does not exist, the system goes to the next table entry and displays a message to this effect. To set the route determination in the order, choose Route determination without weight group (order) for each combination of departure country/zone and destination country/zone. For delivery route determination, choose Route determination with weight group (delivery). Then enter a route for a combination of influencing factors (shipping conditions, transport group and weight group, where necessary). There are various ways to enter routes: Choose New entries to manually enter combinations of influencing factors with the desired route. Choose New entries and then Enter further combinations to display all influencing factors that do not yet have a corresponding route maintained for them. You can then enter the routes that you would like to add and choose Delete init. routes . This action transfers only maintained entries into the table. In other words, entries with no route maintained (those whose route field is blank), are not transferred.

You can only maintain generic entries during route determination in a delivery. This means you can enter a route for a line in which you have neither shipping condition nor transportation group or in which you have only one shipping condition and no transportation group. Enter a proposed route for determination in the order and an actual route for determination in the delivery. You can control which routes given in the delivery (actual routes) may overwrite the routes given in the order (proposed routes) in activity The entries are displayed in such a way that a line only contains an entry when that entry differs from the previous one, resulting in a clear, easily comprehensible arrangement of information. For example, you can easily identify all the entries for shipping condition 01 (As Soon As Possible) because all the lines under that entry are blank until you come to the next shipping condition, 02 (Standard).

Further Notes
The Customer exit 0VRF001 is also provided to assist you in developing an individual route determination or modifying the existing route determination.

Define Allowed Actual Route By Proposed Route

In this IMG activity, you specify the allowed actual routes for each proposed route. The proposed route is the route determined by the system. The actual routes are the permitted alternative routes which you can enter manually in the sales document in place of the proposed route found by the system. When route determination is repeated in the delivery, the proposed route can be replaced by one of the permitted actual routes. You can check the actual routes to establish whether they are allowed (see section

Requirements

First define the routes.

Activities
1. Check which proposed routes can be replaced by actual routes, if necessary. 2. Enter the permitted actual routes for each proposed route.

Define New Route Determination By Delivery Type

In this IMG activity, you determine for each delivery type whether or not route determination should be repeated by the SAP System when creating a delivery. If route determination should be repeated, you can have the SAP System check whether the actual route found for the delivery is allowed instead of the original proposed route

Requirements
The delivery types must already be defined. The defined delivery types are automatically displayed for maintenance.

Actions
1. Check for which delivery types new route determination is necessary. 2. Specify for each delivery type whether route determination should be repeated and whether a found actual route should be checked to ascertain whether it is allowed.