The release of SAP Transportation Management 9.3 and SAP Extended Warehouse Management 9.3 brought about Transit Warehousing.

With transit warehousing you can seamlessly integrate the planned flow of goods in SAP TM and the physical flow of goods in SAP EWM over the entire transportation chain. Integration is based on execution documents resulting from forwarding orders.

With this process you can temporarily store cargo in transit warehouses or gateways (air freight) or in container freight stations (ocean freight) until it is transported. You can also organize cargo over the entire transportation chain and get transparency over warehouse-specific data.

Handling cargo at a location can be repeated for several locations.

Transit Warehousing Scenario

In Transit Warehousing, the freight forwarder receives cargo from shippers based on inbound planning from SAP TM. Cargo is consolidated into groups based on their destination and transported to a transit warehouse. Based on SAP TM outbound planning, the cargo is either shipped to the next location or delivered to the final consignee.

Both inbound and outbound transportation planning is possible using this process.

Cargo is managed as handling units (HUs) and cargo information is kept directly in the documents used in the warehouse. In a transit warehouse, you put away HUs with the same destination region in the same storage bin. Making HUs available for shipment to the next location or to the consignee. With the next outbound plan sent by SAP TM, you either load the HUs directly from the staging area used for putaway, or stage the HUs before loading them onto a vehicle.

In transit warehouses near airports or seaports, you load the HUs onto unit load devices or containers before shipping. SAP EWM informs SAP TM when major processes are completed in the transit warehouse. This could include things like: arrival at checkpoint, departure from checkpoint, and receiving or loading completion.

You can use this business scenario to integrate warehouse execution with freight forwarding operations using SAP EWM and SAP TM.