<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ManualTopic ID="/baanerp/fm/onlinemanual/000011" xml:lang="en">
   <Header>
      <Title>The use of shipping offices and planning groups</Title>
      <Keyword type="header" order="d1e488975">
         <Level1>Shipping office</Level1>
         <Level2>master data</Level2>
      </Keyword>
      <Keyword type="header" order="d1e488980">
         <Level1>Planning group</Level1>
         <Level2>master data</Level2>
      </Keyword>
   </Header>
   <GeneralSection>
      <Paragraph>The <Link href="/baanerp/fm/glossary/glossary#000006" role="glossary">shipping office</Link> and <Link href="/baanerp/fm/glossary/glossary#000012" role="glossary">planning group</Link> entities play a key role in freight order
		grouping and load building.</Paragraph>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>Business environment</SectionTitle>
      <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
		types of goods, or goods that require special handling.</Paragraph>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>Setup</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph>In ERP Enterprise, 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 ERP Enterprise 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>
      <Important>
         <SectionTitle>Important!</SectionTitle>
         <Paragraph>For direct deliveries, however, the goods originate from
		  external suppliers and go directly to customers without going through your
		  warehouse. Therefore, there is no link between the shipping office and
		  warehouses, or originating orders and warehouses in the direct delivery
		  situation. This situation is modeled by means of shipping matrices that have no
		  warehouses as selection criteria.</Paragraph>
      </Important>
   </GeneralSection>
   <GeneralSection>
      <SectionTitle>Outline of the freight order and freight order line grouping
		process</SectionTitle>
      <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. For direct deliveries,
		shipping office matrices are used that have no warehouses as selection
		criteria.</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.</Paragraph>
   </GeneralSection>
   <RelatedTopics>
      <SectionTitle>Related topics</SectionTitle>
      <RelTopic>
         <Link href="/baanerp/fm/onlinemanual/000100" role="manual">Shipping office matrices</Link>
      </RelTopic>
      <RelTopic>
         <Link href="/baanerp/fm/onlinemanual/000012" role="manual">Plan matrices and matrix definitions</Link>
      </RelTopic>
      <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 without shipping office matrix</Link>
      </RelTopic>
   </RelatedTopics>
</ManualTopic>