TMS problems 2011

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Contents

Intro

This wiki contains description of all TMS/Portal integration problems, including the TMS tariff problems.

Started: march 2011.

Tariff problems

  • tariffs updated with a delay
  • only IT can update tariffs
  • discrepancy due mileage calculators
  • tariffs are incomplete
  • what else?

see also weekly update attached to mantis http://ct.jaguarfreight.com/mantis/view.php?id=2363

ETA: = Estimated resolution date:

Related wiki: TMS tariff problems 2011]]

TARIFF HIGH

Albert Farms: problems

Per John at Albert Farms, their system is set to bill EA for moves ex Madawaska, ME to Roanoke, VA at 1141 miles, while the TM calculates it at 1114. When speaking with John & asking about the mileage calculator used, he confirmed it is PC Miler - but v.15. As well, settings they apply are also the same as TM - Practical & Heavy but have a border option set as closed (being they are on the US Canadian line). As the TM calculates with PC Miler, I asked John to check the mileage via their PC Miler program and he came up with 1138, but again this was using the same settings (Practical, Heavy & closed borders).

Temporary solution - I added the flat rate of $ 1776.50 for the move from Madawaska to Roanoke to the Albert Farms tariff, but it still does not resolve the differences in mileage calculations. 

 From: Denise Guastella 
 Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 1:14 PM
 To: Denise Guastella; eadom
 Cc: Robert Link; Marc Selter; Alex Dobrovolsky
 Subject: RE: Re: Albert Farm tariff
 All,
 I’m sorry please disregard the below e-mail and note the following:
 I successfully added the rate of $ 1776.50, from Madawaska to Roanoke, to the existing Albert Farm tariff in the TMS.   Please 
 let me know if this rate does not apply to any load you route with them ex Madawaska to Roanoke.
 Thanks,
 Denise

TARIFF MED

Express Air: Complex logic of plts vs weight is not supported (and it is too high?)

ETA: ? This is something that needs to be negotiated between Arden/JFS/Express Air

Problem: This tariff compares total cost based on weight and on plts and selects higher amount. Descartes can not accommodate this type of tariff. As a result 2 tariffs should be maintained and operators must switch manually between the two in many cases.

Solution: option 1) re-negotiation - pndg confirmation as to who will manage these contracts, if JFS, then we'll need to set a standard for rates. option 2) restructure of tariff ratings, request a standard weight rate (?)

ALL: Some accessorial charges are unknown to JFS at the time of tendering

Examples: p/u and del same day charge; hazardous surcharge (it seems common enough when shipper users create a record in the portal, they do not select Haz Y, so then when the trucker goes in for pickup the shipper provides them with a BOL where it states goods are hazardous); team drivers.

ALL: Hazmat fees has to be applied manually if shipper does not correctly note this at time of record creation

Example: hazmat 35.00 - These charges will automatically apply, as long as the shipper who creates the record notes the shipment as hazardous.

TARIFF LOW

All: Different types of mileage calculators converters

ETA: ?

Descr:

Mileage being off is due to different carriers/ truckers using different types of mileage calculators/converters. This is affecting rates for a few different carriers.

Solution and Notes:

Denise: Mileage calculations are off in the TM as Descartes uses PC Miler WW v23 with upgrading to the latest version 24 within the next month. The reason for mileage being off is due to different carriers/ truckers using different types of mileage calculators/converters. This is affecting rates for a few different carriers – namely Lawrence Transportation, Landstar, Harris & Albert Farms. We’ve asked Descartes about the ability to apply a different mileage converter per trucking company basis, but have no feedback. Yet after further discussion with Descartes about the mileage calc they use, it would appear that there are settings within a carrier’s contract that will take into consideration other settings to be able to get a more accurate mileage count.

Descartes comments re the variations in the mileage calculators: At this time, the options available within TM include:

  • PC*Miler Worldwide (a 3rd party engine licensed for use by Jaguar. To my knowledge, all but one of our TM customers use this.)
  • Q&D Miler (an option provided by Descartes but it’s only for high-level distance estimates)
  • Rand McNalley (another 3rd party engine but Jaguar is not licensed to use this option)

Integrating other distance calculation engines and/or exposing additional settings/parameters within the TM UI for the existing engines may be feasible but I’m not aware of any plans to do so.

Solved

Please refer to the following above/below:

Unsolved HIGH priority

Duplicate Addresses (ETA: 19-May release, Sasha & Ari)

Descr:

2 or more addresses in Address book are identical except Company Name. They are duplicates and cause numerous problems.

This is not exclusively TMS problem. This is a general problem. But:

  • TMS solution helped create duplicates (famous NPA feature)
  • It is a serious problem for TMS because:
    • duplicates "create" Extra “dummy” stop which leads to no updates on one of the CT in such load in CT2 DB
    • when running a report for a location one must select all duplicate items that relate to same address

Solution and Notes:

  • a) Eliminate address duplicates in CT2 that already exist (Sasha's idea)
    • Sasha has already resolved this under mantis 2853, as well as provided us with a word document containing full instructions on how to clean up
    • Ari is done cleaning this up all NON archived addresses & will clean up archived addresses upon next release.
  • b) Prevent forming duplicates in the future (to be discussed & suggest to keep Sasha's instructions in mind)

Note: Descartes quick fix under Notes From Denise:

1. Due to CT address book issues IE – multiple addresses for the same company – when a user selects 2 or more shipments that have the same street address, yet has a variation in the company name, the TM creates 2 separate delivery stops for the load. When that happens, the TM does not set an estimated delivery time for the 2nd stop and leave that xml attribute blank, therefore these xml files are incomplete/corrupt and CT does not accept the update of pickup trucker, delivery trucker & est. pickup & delivery dates. Descartes feels this is a design bug on their end and will correct it, but in the interim as we clean up our address book, they have mapped the 1st stops estimated delivery date to the 2nd stops estimated delivery date, making their xml files complete & when we receive them, they will continue to update each CT record the same.

CT2 to TMS transfer fails sometimes P1 (ETA: 19-May release)

Descr:

Not all approved shipments have Shipment Import file sent to TM.

Reason is still unknown

Solution and Notes: 

0002750 Bug: Not all approved shipments have Shipment Import file sent to TM - Solution was added for script to periodically send all approved shipments with statuses "yet" or "failed" (in case of connection fail). This was coded, passed QA & needs  UAT  



0002835	new	mihail 	a. Dev 	[EDI TMS ph2] Add "fail" status to the list of TMS statuses This was coded, passed QA & needs  UAT

Problems related to Earliest and Latest Pick Up Dates (resolved; April release)

Descr:

CT2 to TMS mapping is incorrect for these dates, also the way we use these dates is not well thought through.

This leads to several sub-problems:

A] no overlap in pick up windows for shipments in the load so load can’t be created (or is created with problems - "corrupt XML")

B] "Corrupt XML" files were sending multiple e-mails to shipper users every 5 mins (FIXED? good fix?)

    • Descartes copied the first DocLoadStop

C] status messages info is not updating

Solution and Notes:

Workaround#1 (through UI, very time consuming): To set up Appointment on the load before tendering

Quick programming fix: 0002797: [EDI to TMS] (Shipment_Import) (Earliest & Latest Available Date problem) Approved On/Approved On+X days quickfix

Notes from Denise:

1. Earliest & Latest Pickup Date is set in the shipment, which is currently mapped to the created on date &/or the date that the planner put on hold for approval with a 9am to 5pm window. Mantis 2797 was created to allow for CT admin users to set the amount of time between the Earliest & Latest Pickup dates that will pass on our shipment import into the TM. This solution was provided to cut down on current manually workarounds for dates.

2. Corrupt XML files were sending multiple e-mails to shipper users every 5 mins, this was due to users creating a load with 1 shipment, then selecting other shipment records, adding them to this already created load but these shipments have a variation of earliest & latest pickup dates. Then the TM takes all of the dates into consideration, automatically sets the earliest and latest available date for the load and being the dates were so out of range, their system was unable to understand how to handle.

Therefore Descartes provided a workaround for this and for the users to:

a. No longer use the create load option & select to select the consolidate option

b. Set a pickup appointment to the date of when the load will be picked up

c. Use the resequence option, which will have the TM re-order the dates for the TM to suggest a better window for the loads earliest and latest available date 


From: Mauricio Ruiz [mailto:mruiz@descartes.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 4:02 PM
To: Alex Dobrovolsky
Cc: Denise Guastella
Subject: RE: LD 6107

Hi Alex,
The process is the next one:
Tm use the “Latest Available Date” on the shipment or load to see when that date fits into the “Effective Date Start” and “Effective Date End”, once it finds which fuel price is extracted between those dates it goes to the fuel surcharge matrix and see in which bracket the fuel price will fit, once it finds the bracket it extract the “cents per mile” or “percentage” to calculate the FSC.

If for example you have a shipment or a load that has “Latest Available Date” in the future and you don’t have a fuel price that match those dates, then the system will use the most proximate fuel date to calculate the FSC.
Hope this helps, if you need more detail or will like to have a Webex for this please let me know.

Regards,
Mauricio


From: Alex Dobrovolsky [mailto:alex@jaguarfreight.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:50 PM
To: Mauricio Ruiz
Cc: Denise Guastella; Alex Dobrovolsky
Subject: RE: LD 6107

Mauricio,
Could you please explain what logic do you have for pulling “Fuel price” from weekly table.
Denise told me that “Effective Date Start” there gets associated with average of “Latest Pickup” dates.
But could you please be very  specific? What biz rule is?
We are trying to resolve the problem of system pulling the wrong “Fuel price” from weekly table because of incorrect Earliest & Latest Available Date mapping.
Thanks!
Best Regards,
Alex Dobrovolsky
IT Manager

Fuel surcharge (FSC) problems

Descr:

“Allocated shipment costs”/”Load costs” report is incorrect due to FSC problems.

This is because Fuel surcharge (FSC) on Loads calculates incorrectly due to using wrong week on “Fuel price” weekly table.

Because it is a function of “Latest Available Date(LAD)” which is set incorrectly by Portal (to created on date)


Solution and Notes:

Quick fix: 0002797: [EDI to TMS] (Shipment_Import) Change Mapping of the Earliest & Latest Available Date and/or add a delivery appointment to the load before tendering to carrier

Note from Denise:

1. As there are issues with the dates, the TM currently applies the FSC incorrectly for every load, as it is based upon the Earliest & Latest Available dates set by the TM’s logic it is not an accurate way of rating the FSC as not all loads are picked up according the latest available date set by the TM. Therefore the following workaround was set: a. Change every shipment records earliest & latest pickup date to the date in which the load will be picked up and this is to ensure proper application of that weeks FSC. b. As well, Descartes advised to add the delivery appointment date to each load prior to tendering.

Unsolved MED priority

Unsolved LOW priority

Clean up old shipments or loads in TMS

  • EA Dom is working on this and hope to resolve/cleanup within the next month


Limitation of 50 shipments per load

Descr:

Descartes has a limit of 50 shipments per load for EDI with truckers.

Solution and Notes:


From: Denise Guastella

Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 5:03 PM

To: Stacy Weber

Cc: Alex Dobrovolsky; Robert Link; Marc Selter

Subject: RE: load 6672 - EDI To Lawrence

Importance: High

Hi Stacy,

I spoke with Chad from Descartes about this and why it happens. He explained that this happens because EDI messaging has a limitation of 50 shipments for such exchanges. That Alexis created a way to send such large edi transmission to the carrier but it only contains the first 50 shipment records… so he had to cut out the remaining 10 records from the message. So since it is only the first 50 shipments worth of information, when Lawrence pickups at the shippers facility, as long as they issue a BOL, that will provide the total # of CT records, pcs & weight for that load.

To advise, the load plan is not affected by this which means that it will update each of the CT records that were a part of that load with Lawrence as the pickup & delivery trucker, as well as set the estimated pickup & delivery dates.

Now as a far as receiving status updates from Lawrence as to when they confirm the pickup date and/or delivery date, this is something that Chad has to look further into as he is unsure if we will receive the update for all CT records, meaning based upon the entire load? Or if it’s only going to be received for the first 50 that were originally sent on their 204 transmission. He should advise us further tomorrow and I will confirm to all once more is known/received.

Thank you, Denise




Pool point problem

TMS has a serious limitation in Pool Point design.

Because of that EADom team using workaround that is cumbersome.

Details TBD.

001 problem

If shipper enters plts and loose qty then TMS creates 2 line items - one for plts count and one for loose count. Since we collect only combined weight we put real weight on line with pallets and dummy weight of 0.01 on second line.

In this case when operator edits the shipment system complains about 0.01 number and it must be changed to say .01

Another related problem: shipper sometimes enters "pkgs/plts" value in addition into loose field incorrectly due to misunderstanding.

Solutions


Many outdated shipments are present in TMS

Problem

There are many shipments in TMS that are not relevant anymore.

Solution

Marc suggested to delete all shipments that are older than 3 months. See: for solution

Training and knowledge transfer is far behind

Problem


Solution

Problem of constant change

Problem


Solution

Solved Problems

Weight discrepancy btwn KGS & LBS

Descr:

Solution and Notes:

Denise: Weight discrepancy was mentioned, btwn KGS & LBS and I was able to confirm the following:

a. Record created by shipper in portal as LBS, it is saved in the portal as LBS, upon approval it is recorded in the CT record as LBS, the client role lists the weight in LBS & it is passed to TMS on the shipments line item as LBS, as well as it is recorded in LBS under shipments Total Calculated Weight

b. Record created by shipper in portal as KGS, it is saved in the portal as LBS, upon approval it is recorded in the CT record as KGS, the client role lists the weight in LBS & it is passed to TMS on the shipments line item as KGS, but it is recorded in LBS under the shipments Total Calculated Weight  this is used for rating purposes, but am not 100% sure if it also used for reporting purposes in the TM

There is 1 report that is used for the dom project, it is being effected with this weight discrepancy’s and it is the In Transit report. It’s for both the client & int apps, as this report has hard coding for MOT Truck to list weight in KGS, even though it is mostly recorded/entered in LBS, but to confirm all calculations done by the system are correct

CTMS (Cybertrax TMS next generation)

Another way of addressing these problems is to make features fond in TMS available in CT2:

  • create loads in CT2 and push loads, not shipments to TM (per Stacy 99% of time they make decision about groupping CTs into loads on CT2 side)
  • create routing guides / assign trucker on CT2 side
  • process pooling on CT2 side

In this case potentially operator would not need to go into TMs side that much if at all. After Load is pushed system would auto tender.

Also even more extreme approach would be to pass loads through EDI avoiding altogether TMS UI.

  • create tariffs DB on CT2 side
  • provide Web forms to carriers / or EDI
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