Creating a load building strategy to help increase efficiency with Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management

Transportation management is incredibly important. Especially now when shipping has become a cost burden on many companies with all the delays and increasing gas prices. Additionally, running a warehouse and coordinating shipments is a lot of work. Many logistics managers struggle to keep every aspect of the business running smoothly. Ensuring that your company has an updated and effective transportation management system will increase efficiency in your business, make sure that the transportation of goods is reliable, and reduce your overall costs. By using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365)’s Transportation Management system, it will help smooth out some of the wrinkles that comes with managing mass transportation of goods.

Create a load building strategy

You use load building strategies to automatically build loads. This capability can be beneficial in the following situations:

• If you regularly ship a specific set of products, load strategies help save time, because you don’t have to build the same load every time.
• If you want to avoid half-full loads to maximize efficiency, load strategies can help fill each load as much as possible.

To create a load building strategy, follow these steps.

1. Go to Transportation management > Setup > Load building > Load building strategies.
2. On the Action Pane, select Generate class list to make sure that you have the latest versions of all available classes.
3. On the Action Pane, select New.
4. Enter a unique name for the strategy, select the load building strategy class for it, and enter a description.
5. On the Action Pane, select Save.
6. On the Action Pane, select Parameters.
7. On the Load building strategy parameters page, select Volume capacity in the list, and then, in the Value field, enter the percentage of the load’s total volume capacity that should be applied for the new load building strategy.
8. Select Weight capacity in the list, and then, in the Value field, enter the percentage of the load’s total weight capacity that should be applied for the new load building strategy.
9. Close the Load building strategy parameters page.
10. Close the Load building strategies page.

You can now assign the load building strategy to a load building template. Alternatively, you can use it directly in the load planning workbench.

Use a load building strategy in the load building workbench

1. Go to Transportation management > Planning > Load building workbench.
2. Follow one of these steps:
   • Select a strategy in the Load building strategy field.
   • If you’ve defined a load building template and assigned the load building strategy to it, on the Action Pane, on the Manage templates tab, select Apply template. Then, in the Apply load building template drop-down dialog box, select a template in the Load building template name field.
3. On the Load templates sequence FastTab, select one or more load templates. The workbench will try to fit the load into these types of containers, in the sequence that is specified here. Typically, you should put the smallest containers at the top of the list to ensure that the smallest possible container is selected first.
4. On the Action Pane, select Propose loads.
5. Review the proposed loads and proposed load lines.
6. On the Action Pane, select Create loads to create loads that are based on the source document lines on the Proposed load lines FastTab.
7. Close the Load building workbench page.

Next Steps