In my last post, I summarized the OTM-WMS integration and what it means for WMS. In this post I will outline some best practices when using OTM with Oracle WMS, what you need to watch out for and how to get the most from your WMS and OTM investments.
The integration point for shipping itinerary is absolutely critical as that drives the entire execution flow in WMS. Here are some things to watch out for:
How should you integrate with OTM?
The most logical method to integrate with OTM is to select the orders for release typically on scheduled ship dates or other selection filters, sending the order release information for the transportation planning, approving the plan and finally using the transportation plan for WMS for execution. This is the most common use case and the packaged EBS-OTM integration supports this. In EBS-Speak, this means you first create deliveries, send the deliveries to OTM, get the trip information from OTM and then perform pick release or wave planning in WMS followed by task execution in WMS.
Is this the only way? Well no. There are enterprises that plan warehouse activities before they plan transportation. This is not a common scenario and the enterprises who adopt this approach are usually the firms that outsource their entire transportation operations meaning an external firm manages the transportation of goods for a fixed charge. You will likely not need OTM in such a case.
What do Deliveries and Order Release mean?
One drawback of the packaged EBS-OTM integration is its reliance on deliveries. Nothing wrong with deliveries as such, but the packaged integration demands that no changes be made to deliveries during the integration process. This is a round-about way of saying that you cannot take advantage of OTM order release splitting. What about EBS orders that exceed full trailer loads? There is a way out. EBS automatically splits those deliveries that exceed the maximum size of a trailer. Obviously this is not a perfect solution and may result in a sub-optimal transportation plan in certain situations. However the good news is that there are several creative ways to get over this impediment that I will discuss in subsequent posts.
Handling Multi-Leg Shipments
One of the biggest benefits of OTM is its ability to consolidate less than truckload or parcel shipments directly to customers into a multi-modal shipment that maximizes full truckload shipments. These TL shipments could be routed through a deconsolidation pooling point. What does it mean for EBS or WMS? Not much if you are using the standard EBS-OTM integration. This is because only the first shipment leg is received back into EBS. There is really no visibility to second or subsequent legs in EBS or WMS. This is not much of a problem especially if the deconsolidation point is a carrier hub or other transshipment point.
But what if it’s your own facility? This may post challenges:
- Crossdock shipments: What if your consolidation or deconsolidation center crossdocks material from receiving directly into shipping? What if you want to achieve even more savings by scheduling receipts and shipments in OTM so that full truckload shipments are maximized? How do you handle these receipts and shipments in WMS if you own this crossdock facility?
- Merge in-transit: How do you schedule multiple receipts from different sources and combine them into a single shipment? How do you handle the receipts and storage of components in WMS as they await the build of outbound shipment?
- Labeling and Shipping documents: How do you create labels and shipping documents at an intermediate point?
- Accounting/ownership recognition: If the facility is your own you may run into challenges such as when do you account for change of ownership and recognize revenue?
Is the Transportation Plan feasible?
The typical integration flow means that transportation planning is carried out before wave planning or pick release in WMS. This could present some challenges such as insufficient labor or inventory exists for the planned items? A recommended practice is to ensure availability check or even enable reservations prior to sending the delivery information to OTM. Nonetheless sometimes you will end up with situations where the planned load from OTM may not have sufficient inventory or resources to fill. OTM does allow rerating of these deliveries when that happens.
This to me is one of the most significant problems with the typical integration flow. Most Oracle customers are already familiar with the hassle of dealing with deliveries and trips in a back order situation (btw, can we start a petition to have Oracle simplify that process? J ). Now, add to that the fact these trips and deliveries have already been planned in OTM and it just adds to the problems.
OTM Container Configuration and WMS Cartonization
OTM has a very useful feature called for container optimization that shows pallet loading configuration in a trailer. WMS has a useful feature called cartonization. Unfortunately how the cartons can be loaded onto the pallet to achieve optimized container load is not available. WMS and OTM handshake remains a pipe dream in this area. Hopefully Oracle will fix this soon.
Master Data and UOM
EBS and WMS give you limitless ability to define Units of measure. Alas no such thing on the OTM side! OTM has “hardcoded” UOMs. Tough luck if you have defined UOMs such as CS4, CD8, etc. in WMS to manage your package UOMs. This is no big deal really just that you may have to map EBS UOMs to OTM UOMs and take care of this translation in BPEL.
Load Sequencing and Staging
Ok, you now have your deliveries/trips planed to your liking and are ready to release your pick wave. How do you ensure that the material is staged appropriately? – i.e. the material that gets loaded first (dropped off last) is staged closest to the dock door and so forth? You could use the Outbound Consolidation Plan for that purpose, but you will find that it does not really serve to address all your needs. This plan can be set to Locator or LPN level, but it just consolidates based on deliveries and hence does not give you the control you need – whichever delivery gets picked first will be staged first. You can do some tweaking, but not much and not enough.
Now look, my point here is not just to highlight problems, as I don’t see any of these as insurmountable difficulties frankly. We have seen and come up with solutions for most of these problems for various clients. For example, for the staging problem, we came up with a simple concurrent program that runs post pick release and assigns appropriate staging lanes. However, I do want you to consider these issues while planning your OTM-WMS implementation and make sure that these needs are analyzed and accounted for in your project.
So what does it mean? You are better off doing a gap analysis of the integration itself just like you do the other features during the design phase of OTM-WMS implementation. Depending upon the needs, there may be additional work involved to make the two products work better for your operations.
-Amin Sikander
Tags: Amin Sikander, Oracle EBS, Oracle Transportation Management, Oracle WMS, OTM, OTM Integration Issues, WMS