SAP Transportation Management and SAP HANA

Excerpt from Practical Guide to SAP Transportation Management (TM).

HANA-enabled SAP TM
From SAP TM 9.1 on, there are two options for deploying HANA.
1. Sidecar approach
The TM application operates on any of the recommended DB’s (such as Oracle and others). The HANA stack is installed in parallel. The replication from the DB to the HANA stack allows for the use of analytics capabilities (see below for details).

2. Deploying HANA in TM stack
Instead of the DB, HANA is used. This does not guarantee a higher application performance, although all analytic-related capabilities are provided. (see Figure 4.2)

SAP Smart Business provides a preconfigured reporting framework based on the SAP Fiori technology.

The prerequisites are:

• SAP Smart Business Product: SAP Smart Business for Transportation Management 1.0
• Virtual Data Model (VDM): SAP HANA Analytics for TM 1.0
• SAP Business Suite Product: SAP Transportation Management 9.0 SPS03

SAP Smart Business for Transportation Management is a collection that provides an overview of the most important key performance indicators for a transportation manager. It allows the transportation manager to monitor the operational transportation business based on the latest reported events, including forwarding orders created, transportation orders created, average utilization by transportation orders, transportation requirements created, dangerous goods, and transportation costs, revenue, and profit. The transportation manager can use this functionality to monitor the business and track financial information to get insights into the business. This helps the transportation manager to identify any issue that might need to be investigated more closely as early as possible and if necessary, to correct issues in the operational business before they escalate.

Figure 4.2: Technical architecture with SAP HANA

The following reports are provided as of TM 9.1:

• Forwarding Orders
• Transportation Cost
• Transportation Profit
• Transportation Revenue
• Transportation Orders
• Transportation Orders with Discrepancies
• Transportation Requirements
• Dangerous Goods
• Average Delay Time (POD)
• Avg. Cycle Time Delayed Deliveries (POD)
• Avg. Cycle Time of Deliveries
• Delayed Deliveries (POD)
• Delayed Deliveries (Total)
• Delayed Deliveries (In Transit)
• Reporting Completeness
• Reporting Compliance

Keep reading in Practical Guide to SAP Transportation Management (TM) by Tobias Götz & Anette Götz.

Managing the movement of goods from one place to another is just one small requirement of a Transportation Management (TM) software. To understand the complete process, there is so much more to consider. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the transportation processes supported by SAP TM 9.3 including functional highlights, system architecture options (including HANA), and integration aspects. Dive into planning, execution, and tracking processes and detailed configuration. Get best practices on how to best set up capacity management functionality and learn more about charge calculation and settlement. This hands-on guide is for those new to SAP TM, as well as experienced solution consultants, and includes step-by-step descriptions and screenshots.

• A Comprehensive Overview of All of the Processes Enabled by SAP TM
• Configuration Best Practices for All Modes of Transport
• Instructions for Integrating Transportation Requirements
• Tips on Integration with SAP ERP, EWM, GTS, EH&S, EM
• Options for Manual, Semi-automated, and Completely Automated Planning