INCOMPATIBILITY PROCESSING

• US 20100205026A1
• Filed: 02/09/2010
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/01/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Malitski, Konstantin, Gottlieb, Jens, Eckert, Christoph
• Granted Patent: US 7,983,942 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06312 Adjustment or analysis of established resource schedule, e.g. resource or task levelling, or dynamic rescheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06313 Resource planning in a project environment
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06316 Sequencing of tasks or work
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08355 Routing methods

Abstract

A method of processing incompatibilities for a transportation plan comprising the following steps: Receiving data which is descriptive of orders, data which is descriptive of available vehicles, and data which is descriptive of available cross-docking locations; reading a set of compatibility types, and a set of compatibility rules with respect to the plurality of orders, vehicles, and cross-docking locations, each compatibility rule specifying a combination of two values which refer to first and second attributes of a defined compatibility type, and being indicative whether or not they are compatible; associating a value with each order, the value being descriptive of the characteristics of the order, such that orders having the same characteristics have the same value associated therewith; replacing the data descriptive of the characteristics by the value associated therewith; and outputting the order data resulting from the preceding step.

Claims

1. A method of modeling incompatibilities in a transportation planning and optimization system, comprising:

providing a data structure for a field catalogue, the field catalogue providing data field attributes, each of the attributes representing one of

freight units,

vehicles, and

cross-docking locations, respectively;

providing a data structure for a plurality of compatibility types, the data structure providing for each compatibility type data fields for;

a first entry for linking the compatibility type structure with a first attribute of the field catalogue;

a second entry for linking the compatibility type structure with a second attribute of the field catalogue;

providing a number of different compatibility types, each compatibility type being described by values of the data fields as defined in the provided compatibility type data structure;

providing a number of compatibility rules, each compatibility rule specifying a combination of two values which refer to first and second attributes of a defined compatibility type, and being indicative whether or not they are compatible,

applying, by a computer, the compatibility rules upon determining compatible combinations of freight units, vehicles, and cross-docking locations for the shipments of the transportation plan;

determining a transportation plan for a plurality of orders, each order defined by a set of characteristics, at least one characteristic including a number of freight units to be transported from a predetermined place of departure to a predetermined place of destination, each freight unit representing a predefined good, the transportation plan including a plurality of vehicles for transporting freight units, and a plurality of cross-docking locations for loading/unloading freight units onto/from vehicles, each of the freight units, vehicles, and cross docking locations being specified by attributes retained in the field catalogue;

defining shipments within the transportation plan, each shipment specifying the vehicles, and cross-docking locations needed to fulfill a plurality of orders, wherein incompatible number of freight units, vehicles, and cross-docking locations are not allowed within the same shipment.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the compatibility type data structure further provides a data field for an ID for identifying the respective compatibility type.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the compatibility type ID is a numeric value.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the compatibility types comprise at least one of

transportation group, and transportation group;

vehicle, and transportation group;

incoterm, and incoterm;

cross-docking location, and transportation group;

delivery priority, and cross-docking location;

delivery priority, and vehicle;

shipping conditions, and cross-docking location;

shipping conditions, and vehicle;

weight/volume group, and vehicle;

weight/volume group, and cross-docking location;

transportation zone, and vehicle; and

cross-docking location, and vehicle.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein a compatibility rule further comprises a condition ID for restricting the applicability of the compatibility rule onto predefined orders.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the data structure for a plurality of compatibility types models a plurality of different order attributes in a single transaction.

6. A method comprising:

receiving data which is descriptive of a plurality of orders each order having a set of characteristic data which is descriptive of a plurality of available vehicles, and data which is descriptive of a plurality of available cross-docking locations;

reading a set of compatibility types, and a set of compatibility rules with respect to the plurality of orders, vehicles, and cross-docking locations, each compatibility rule specifying a combination of two values which refer to first and second attributes of a defined compatibility type, and being indicative whether or not they are compatible;

associating. by a computer, a value with each order, the value being descriptive of the characteristics of the order, such that orders having the same characteristics have the same value associated therewith;

replacing the data descriptive of the characteristics by the value associated therewith; and

outputting the order data resulting from the preceding operation.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein prior to the outputting, the following are performed:

classifying orders having the same value associated therewith into a group;

replacing the groups which have identical incompatibility relations to all other groups by a class; and

creating a data representation of the orders to group the orders into classes of orders having the same incompatibilities to the other classes.

8. A machine readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by the machine cause the machine to:

obtain data descriptive of an order having a set of characteristic including at least freight units to be transported;

identify available vehicles and available cross-docking locations;

apply a set of compatibility rules to the possible combinations of orders, vehicles and cross-docking locations; and

associate a compatibility value with each order consistent with the compatibility rules so that orders having a same set of characteristics are assigned a same compatibility value.

9. The machine readable medium of claim 8 wherein the instructions further cause the machine to:

group the orders having the same compatibility value;

define as a class any groups having a same compatibility relationship to all other groups; and

create a data representation of the classes.

10. The machine readable medium of claim 9 wherein the instructions further cause the machine to:

generate an incompatibility matrix representing the incompatibilities between pairs of groups;

generate a data structure representing incompatibilities between vehicles and orders and orders and cross-docking locations; and

generate a data structure representing incompatibilities between crossdocking locations and vehicles.

11. A system comprising:

an optimizer to optimize a transportation plan;

a storage unit to persistently retain a set of compatibility rules;

a compatibility engine to simplify a representation of a set of orders based on the compatibility rules prior to providing the orders to the optimizer for optimization, the compatibility rules specifying compatible combinations of freight units, vehicles, and cross-docking locations.