The shipment process includes one single point of entry, handling, and delivering a shipment, including printing of all necessary shipment documents. The shipment process enables proactive shipment planning and re-planning. The process also enables you to create preliminary shipments, containing quantities of order lines in the Released, Reserved, Picked or Partially Delivered status from various orders as long as there is a remaining quantity to be delivered. Then, you can work with the connected order lines as shipment lines. The shipment process generally includes a number of activities and different stages. As a part of the shipment process activities, you can initiate a shipment, connect quantities of order lines to the shipment, pick and report, define a handling unit structure, create handling unit labels and shipment documents, deliver and send dispatch advices. When a shipment is initiated and order lines are connected to the shipment, whether or not an activity in the shipment process should be performed manually or automatically can be defined. The quantity of an order line can be connected to several shipments in parallel in order to handle a limited transport capacity, a backorder situation where you want to prepare the next delivery in advance, a customer requiring a certain delivery schedule etc.
In addition it is also possible to initiate a consolidated shipment and manually connect shipments that have not been delivered yet. The consolidated shipment represents one departure of several shipments from the specified site, to all the delivery addresses of the connected shipments. All the activities in the shipment process, apart from report picking, can then be executed from the consolidated shipment. When executed from the consolidated shipment all activities that prepare the shipments for loading are sorted in load sequence order while the activities more related to unloading are sorted in reversed load sequence order e.g. sorting of delivery notes.
The shipment process can be initiated in two different ways:
Initiating a shipment automatically is made possible when a customer order is released, provided that the relevant shipment information has been maintained in advance for the customer. When a shipment is automatically created, order lines are also automatically connected to the shipment.
When you initiate a shipment manually, you begin by creating a shipment header in which the customer, site, and delivery address is entered. Thereafter, you can connect customer order lines in the Released, Reserved, Picked or Partially Delivered status to the shipment and proceed with the shipment flow.
A shipment process consists of main activities needed in order to proceed with the shipment. In the shipment process the shipment can have the Preliminary, Completed or Closed status. In the table below you can see all the main activities in the shipment process and the status of the shipment as the main flow proceeds:
| Main Activities | Shipment Status |
| Reserve | Preliminary |
| Create Pick List | Preliminary |
| Print Pick List | Preliminary |
| Report Picking | Preliminary |
| Complete | Completed |
| Deliver | Completed |
| Close | Closed |
| Create Invoice | Closed |
| Print Invoice | Closed |
When a shipment is initiated, it assumes the Preliminary status. At this stage, you can make a modification, reservation, create a pick list, print the pick list and pick the report for the shipment. When a shipment is in the Preliminary status, you can make a transition to the Completed status, when packed and ready for delivery. You should note however, that it is also possible to change what is to be delivered by converting a shipment in the Completed status back to a Preliminary status, as long as the shipment has not been delivered. The final stage of a shipment is when it reaches the Closed status. At this point, no further changes to the content of the shipment is allowed and it is considered final and ready for invoicing.
In addition to the main activities, the shipment process also consists of a set of optional activities that you can perform if needed. This includes printing of documents, packing of goods into handling unit structure, connection to a consolidated shipment etc. These optional activities can be performed at any stage of the shipment process. For example, they can be performed in an early stage in order to prepare the shipment and its documents in advance. If changes to the shipment occur later, the optional activity can be performed again until considered as final.
The shipment type of the shipment is essential to control how the shipment process is executed. The shipment processes of your company determine how the shipment type should be defined to get a streamlined and effective process. The shipment type controls for instance:
Defined shipment types can be entered as a default per site, per customer delivery address or per supply chain relation. A default shipment type defined per supply chain relation has the highest priority, then per customer delivery address and last per site. The default shipment type is retrieved when you enter a customer order or a shipment, but you can manually enter another shipment type if needed. Basically, the control of the progress is handed over from the order type of the customer order to the shipment type as soon as a shipment is created. If a shipment is in the Preliminary or Completed status, you can use the Finalize Shipment option. By doing so, the shipment will automatically perform all the necessary shipment activities until it reaches the Closed status. The shipment process defined in the shipment type is overruled when the Finalize Shipment option is used.
In general, once an order line is connected to a shipment, it will no longer be possible to handle the line in the traditional order flow. For example, pick list creation and delivery must be done in the Shipment or Shipments window. Likewise, other shipment activities such as defining a handling unit structure, delivering, and printing of shipment documents must all be performed in the same Shipment or Shipments window. However, reservation and report picking is still possible to perform in the normal order flow if required.
After performing a reservation, you can create a consolidated pick list. However, this is not possible unless some quantity has been reserved. Once the pick list is created and picking is performed, you can proceed to report picking or to report picking with differences if needed. With this approach, it is possible to prepare a shipment at an early stage, and to prepare documents and booking proposals in advance.
If you print preliminary documents before a handling unit structure has been defined for the shipment, these documents will not be complete. Defining a handling unit structure is not a must for a shipment. However if there is a need, defining a structure can be done automatically or manually, and each handling unit is cross-referenced against one or several order lines connected to the shipment. The ability to define a handling unit structure enables an accurate weight and volume calculation of each container. It also provides the ability to track and trace individual containers and their exact contents in terms of quantity, part numbers, customer order lines, and lot/batch numbers. You can make modifications to the automatically created handling unit structure by adding, deleting, or moving handling units within the structure as desired.
You can print the following documents from a shipment. You must note that each of these documents can be printed at various stages in the shipment process, but they will not be final until the shipment is closed.
Note that all of these documents are optional activities that can be printed automatically in the shipment flow depending on the shipment type.
When the shipment is packed and ready for delivery, the shipment should be turned into the Completed status. This means that no more parts should be included in or excluded from the shipment and the handling unit structure is fixed. If you want to change anything, you should turn the shipment back to the Preliminary status. However, if you use shipment inventory you can change the quantity to be delivered also in the Completed status.
For delivery of a completed shipment, only the order lines that have been picked partially or completely can be registered as delivered. The difference compared to the existing order flow is that the delivery in the shipment process is based on the quantities of order lines connected to a shipment rather than a specific order. If a shipment is connected to a consolidated shipment the delivery must be executed from the consolidated shipment for all connected shipments since it is considered as one departure. Note that it is also possible to send and resend a dispatch advice manually. You can also send a dispatch advice automatically instead. However, to do this, relevant information to send a dispatch advice automatically must have been maintained in advance for the customer.
Closure of the shipment can be automatic or manual, depending on the shipment type. The shipment being closed means that the goods have left the sender and no further changes to the content of the shipment is allowed. The only activities still allowed when a shipment is closed, is to create shipment invoice, send or resend the dispatch advice, print shipment documents, handling unit labels and creation and printing of invoice. Use the Finalize Shipment option at any stage to enable an automatic closure of the shipment as a result of performing all the necessary shipment activities. The shipment process defined in the shipment type is overruled in this case.
When the shipment is closed, you can create and print an invoice for the shipment. This can be done manually or automatically depending on the shipment type. To create the invoice per shipment is optional. A normal or collective invoice can be created in the normal way if required.