SD Delivery Processing Part 5: Architecting Delivery Processing at Scale

📌 KEY POINTS
✅ Shipping points and routes define how orders become deliveries — design them from warehouse and transport reality.
✅ Delivery creation strategy: scheduled background creation by shipping point/wave vs manual creation for exceptions.
✅ EWM and TM integration shift picking, packing and planning out of SD; the delivery remains the shared document.
✅ Enhancements such as BAdI LE_SHP_DELIVERY_PROC must be minimal, documented and performance-tested.
⚠️ Delivery splits caused by master data inconsistencies (routes, shipping points) multiply transport cost.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ WHERE WE ARE
Parts 1–4 covered deliveries, configuration, creation and packing. This part is the landscape view.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ 1. SHIPPING POINT AND ROUTE DESIGN

• Shipping points per dispatch area/dock and handling type (cold, hazardous).
• Routes per lane with realistic transit times and calendars.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ 2. CREATION STRATEGY

• Background VL10 jobs per shipping point and cut-off time.
• Waves aligned with warehouse capacity (EWM wave management).
• Exception handling via monitor (VL06O) and logs.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ 3. INTEGRATION

• EWM: outbound delivery request → warehouse tasks, picking, packing, loading, PGI in EWM.
• TM: freight units and orders from deliveries; carrier selection, tendering.
• Carrier/label services and customer ASNs (DESADV).

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ 4. PERFORMANCE

• Mass creation in parallel by shipping point.
• Avoid material locks (late block), keep enhancements lean.
• Archive old deliveries.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ 5. GOVERNANCE AND MONITORING

• Enhancement register (BAdIs, exits) with owners.
• KPIs: on-time delivery creation, split rate, PGI cycle time.
• Configuration comparison across sites.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ STEP BY STEP

1. Map warehouses/docks to shipping points and lanes to routes.
2. Define creation jobs and waves with warehouse.
3. Decide EWM/TM scope and integration points.
4. Register enhancements; set KPIs and monitoring.

✅ CHECKPOINT: every split, delay or failed delivery can be traced to a documented rule or master data item.

A distributor had 14 shipping points in one warehouse because each sales team requested its own. Deliveries split constantly, trucks left half-empty, and the delivery monitor was unmanageable. The architect redesigned to four shipping points by dispatch area and handling type, aligned routes with carrier lanes, and scheduled VL10 in waves matching EWM capacity. Split rate fell by half and transport cost dropped noticeably.

• Shipping points per sales team instead of physical dispatch areas.
• Routes without real transit times.
• Heavy logic in delivery BAdIs.
• No monitoring of VL10 logs.
• Designing SD delivery without EWM/TM involvement.

• Design from physical logistics.
• Automate delivery creation with monitored jobs.
• Keep enhancements minimal and registered.
• Align with EWM/TM early.
• Track split rate and cycle time KPIs.

Questions: "How would you design shipping points and routes?", "How do you create deliveries at scale?", "How does EWM change delivery processing?"
Strong answer: shipping points by dispatch area/handling, routes by lane with transit times, background waves with monitoring, EWM/TM integration responsibilities, performance and enhancement governance (LE_SHP_DELIVERY_PROC), KPIs.