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<ManualTopic ID="/baanerp/fm/onlinemanual/000011" xml:lang="en">
	<Header>
		<Title xmlns:ssa="http://www.ssaglobal.com" xmlns:HTML="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">The use of shipping offices and planning groups</Title>
		<Keyword><Level1>shipping office</Level1>
		</Keyword>
		<Keyword><Level1>planning group</Level1>
		</Keyword>
		<Keyword><Level1>freight order grouping</Level1>
		</Keyword>
		<Keyword><Level1>group</Level1>
		</Keyword>
	</Header>
	<GeneralSection><Paragraph>The <Link href="/baanerp/fm/glossary/glossary#000006" role="glossary">shipping office</Link>
			<Link href="/baanerp/fm/glossary/glossary#000012" role="glossary">planning group</Link> and planning group entities play a key role in freight order grouping and load building.</Paragraph>
		<Paragraph>In most organizations, shipping offices are responsible for the planning or subcontracting of transportation of goods listed on orders. As a rule, each shipping office is responsible for the transportation of orders that originate from a particular warehouse or group of warehouses. Usually, each warehouse stores particular goods, or goods that require special handling.</Paragraph>
		<Paragraph>In SSA ERP, this situation is reflected by the ability to link the warehouse entities to shipping office entities. One or more warehouses can be linked to a shipping office. A shipping office can have various warehouses, but a warehouse can only be linked to one shipping office. In addition, each sales order, purchase order, or planned distribution order created in SSA ERP is linked to a warehouse. This is performed to indicate the warehouse where the goods listed on the order come from, or are to be delivered to, and to group the freight orders.</Paragraph>
		<Paragraph>To perform load building or freight order clustering, freight orders are first grouped by shipping office. Freight order grouping is based on shipping office matrices that provide various criteria to select shipping offices. If no suitable matrix is available, the shipping office is selected based on the warehouses linked to shipping offices in the <GUIRef href="/baanerp/fm/fmd/fmfmd0185m000" role="session">Warehouses by Shipping Office (fmfmd0185m000)</GUIRef> session.</Paragraph>
		<Paragraph>Then, when a number of freight orders are allocated to a shipping office, the freight order lines of these freight orders are grouped into the planning groups defined for this shipping office. The groups of linked freight order lines and planning groups are used by the load building engine to build shipments and loads, or by the freight order clustering engine to build freight order clusters.</Paragraph>
	</GeneralSection>
	<RelatedTopics><SectionTitle>Related topics</SectionTitle>
		<RelTopic><Link href="/baanerp/fm/onlinemanual/000037" role="manual">Freight order grouping</Link>
		</RelTopic>
		<RelTopic><Link href="/baanerp/fm/onlinemanual/000040" role="manual">Example of freight order grouping</Link>
		</RelTopic>
	</RelatedTopics>
</ManualTopic>
