Explore four practical ways manufacturers improve pallet and load building in SAP to reduce costs and increase utilization.
Many manufacturers use SAP to manage customer orders, inventory, and transportation planning. As transportation networks become more complex, planners are often challenged to make accurate loading and transportation decisions while balancing capacity, service, and cost requirements.
For organizations managing dozens or hundreds of shipments each day, traditional planning approaches may not provide enough visibility into loading constraints, trailer utilization, or transportation capacity requirements. The result can be underutilized equipment, unnecessary transportation costs, and additional planning effort.
This article highlights four common scenarios where manufacturers improve transportation performance by incorporating advanced pallet and load optimization into their SAP planning processes.
ORTEC’s SAP-integrated load optimization capabilities help manufacturers bring practical planning intelligence directly into their existing SAP processes. By connecting order, delivery, inventory, and transportation data with advanced pallet and load-building logic, ORTEC helps planners make better decisions without creating a separate planning workflow.
Scenario 1: Optimize load building at the delivery level
Manufacturers frequently consolidate deliveries across customer locations, distribution centers, and transportation routes. Small differences in pallet configuration or trailer utilization result in a significant impact on transportation costs.
By evaluating deliveries together and optimizing how they are combined into transportation loads, organizations increase utilization, reduce the number of transportation units required, and minimize leftover freight that creates downstream planning challenges.
The same approach supports customer deliveries, replenishment shipments, and stock transfers across the network.
With ORTEC integrated into SAP, planners can evaluate delivery data against real-world loading rules, equipment constraints, and consolidation opportunities before transportation plans are finalized.
Scenario 2: Optimize transportation decisions during order entry
Transportation decisions often begin before freight planning starts.
Understanding the transportation requirements associated with an order helps planners make better decisions about capacity, timing, and fulfillment options. This includes evaluating pallet positions, floor space, loading meters, and other transportation constraints while orders are being created.
ORTEC can support this process by calculating transportation-relevant indicators during order entry, such as pallet positions, loading meters, floor space, and weight distribution. That gives teams an earlier understanding of how an order will affect capacity and cost before it moves further downstream.
For organizations that have flexibility within customer agreements, this approach often reduces unnecessary transportation costs and minimizes last-minute planning adjustments.
Scenario 3: Optimize stock transport orders
Stock transport orders help manufacturers replenish distribution centers and manage inventory across locations. Because these movements occur within the organization, they often provide greater flexibility for transportation planning decisions.
Rather than manually splitting inventory across multiple truckloads, organizations can use optimization to create transportation plans that maximize utilization and support more efficient scheduling. This reduces planning effort while helping transportation capacity align with inventory requirements.
In SAP-based replenishment flows, ORTEC can automatically split large stock transport orders into efficient full-truckload movements based on product dimensions, vehicle capacity, and business rules. This helps shift the process from manual load splitting to rules-based planning.
Customer example: Henkel
Henkel uses optimization technology to automatically divide large stock transport orders into full truckload movements, helping planners reduce manual effort and improve transportation efficiency.
Scenario 4: Optimize replenishment planning earlier
Some organizations choose to optimize transportation planning before stock transport orders are created.
Using deployment requisitions and stock transport requisitions as planning inputs allows transportation decisions to influence inventory allocation earlier in the process. This approach provides planners with greater visibility into transportation requirements, inventory availability, and potential shortages before stock is committed.
Planning earlier reduces rework, simplifies inventory management, and helps organizations align transportation decisions more closely with operational priorities.
How ORTEC enhances load optimization in SAP Transportation Management
For organizations using SAP Transportation Management, ORTEC adds advanced load-building intelligence directly into freight planning processes. Planners can optimize freight orders based on load characteristics, vehicle capacity, customer requirements, and operational constraints, helping them build transportation plans that are both efficient and executable.
Optimizing freight orders based on load characteristics, available capacity, and transportation constraints helps planners make better use of trucks and containers while reducing empty space. Evaluating loading decisions and transportation decisions together creates more realistic transportation plans and improves overall utilization.
Customer example: Layher
Layher uses SAP-integrated optimization to improve transport planning and fully utilize transportation capacity while accounting for company-specific loading requirements.
The value of earlier transportation planning
Across all four scenarios, the common theme is simple: transportation decisions become more effective when they are made earlier in the planning process.
By connecting pallet building, load optimization, inventory planning, and transportation planning, manufacturers are able to:
Improve vehicle utilization
Reduce transportation costs
Minimize manual planning effort
Improve visibility into capacity requirements
Create transportation plans that are easier to execute
Organizations with larger transportation networks often uncover significant opportunities simply by improving how planning decisions are connected across SAP environments.
What ORTEC adds to SAP planning
ORTEC helps manufacturers move beyond basic shipment consolidation by applying advanced optimization to the planning data already available in SAP. The solution accounts for product dimensions, stacking rules, sequencing requirements, axle load considerations, vehicle types, customer constraints, and business priorities.
By applying these rules earlier in the SAP planning process, ORTEC helps teams create load plans that are easier to execute in the warehouse, more efficient for transportation, and better aligned with customer delivery requirements.
Improve transportation planning within SAP
See how ORTEC helps manufacturers improve pallet building, load optimization, and transportation planning within SAP. Schedule a demo to explore how SAP-integrated optimization can support your planning process.