Planning
defines what should or could be done within any supply chain management
situation, scheduling is the actual process of managing the necessary activities
to enable the ultimate execution of actions and events as far as possible within
the realms of the plan.
In
terms of bulk oil scheduling, the nomination process is the key scheduling and
communication forum to both notify to and make requests from supply chain
partners. Supply chain partners could represent trading partners such as
customers and suppliers, but equally service partners such as carriers and
inspectors.
In
essence the scheduler uses the rundown, the planning proposals, the supply chain
model and their own specialized decision making abilities to create such
nominations containing schedules that will be executed within the real world.
During
the course of the scheduling process, which is ongoing for the entire life cycle
of any movement at least up until physical completion, scheduled items and thus
nominations can be changed for any number of reasons – inventory issues, vessel
availabilities, slippages on pipelines, trading partners changing their
requests, production shutdowns etc.
The
TSW Rundown, Worklist and Nomination together highlight the need for the
scheduler to take action and then support the decision making process, as well
as the ability to capture the outcomes of those decisions within the nomination
itself.
Each
schedule line on a nomination describes a single movement activity, such as a
load / injection or a discharge. As each schedule line can also relate to a
business transaction with a different trading partner to every other schedule
line, the later handling during execution is controlled from the schedule via a
number of “scenario differentiators”, the main one of which is customizable to
allow all possibilities to be covered.
This
set of scenario differentiators allow a wide range of customizable and automated
SAP R/3 document generation routines to be triggered due to the actualization of
a schedule line caused by a valid ticketing (c.f.) posting.
This
then provides support to handle sales processes, either triggered from
referenced contracts or orders (in the former case the call-off from the
contract is part of the automated process), purchase processes similarly from
contracts or orders, and stock transfer processes typically for replenishment
purposes (where, depending on set-up, the document within R/3 to handle the
transfer can be automatically generated too).
In
all cases, it is possible to define the document generation routine to use any
referenced document, the schedule line and the ticket posting to generate
complete document flows up to and including goods movement postings, with the
option to include TD shipments for those movements where transport was a
consideration (as opposed to book transfers where transport is not relevant) –
and this is all automated into a background process.
