Overview - Subcontractor Management

Trips and orders follow the same lifecycle in Aptean TMS Calidus Edition whether these are for third-party carriers or own fleet. See “Aptean Routing & Scheduling – Order Import & Handling” for details on the order and trip lifecycles. This document in ancillary to that one.

Orders

Orders can be for customers that require a specific carrier (i.e. 3rd party carrier or 3PC) for execution (a preferred or mandated carrier).

Further, the from and to locations may define a route that is assigned to a 3PC (for example, where the locations match a specific geographical area, then always immediately build a route for a specific 3PC).

Aptean TMS can specify these schedule rules and ensure that these are always automatically planned for execution by those carriers and never planned for trunk or first/final mile routes by own-fleet.

Specific Carrier Routes can be created to specify depots out of which third-party carriers will collect goods, so that orders can be routed to the correct depot, then collected by the carrier.

All remaining orders will then be planned for collection/radial/trunk routing. Where an overflow of orders is determined by insufficient resource to be undeliverable by the planners, these remaining orders will be left as UNSCHEDULED or SCHED_COLL (essentially not fully scheduled) status in the order well.

These orders may then be manually planned onto existing 3PC routes created above, or new routes.

Carrier Selection

When a carrier is known, the carrier may simply be selected for the trip created for these orders. If the carrier is not known or multiple carriers exist, the user can ask the system to select the best 3PC for the trip. TMS will calculate the charges for each carrier specifically and compare costs, selecting the best. The calculated charges from the carriers will be specified in the audit trail.

The system has specific carrier screens to manage third-party carriers, their trips and orders planned for those carriers, as well as helping to search for unplanned or partially-planned orders to tender to carriers. This includes visibility of previous costs for that carrier lane, to aid in cost management.

Carrier Restrictions

When planning orders to existing trips, carrier restrictions for maximum weights, volume, items, postal areas, DU types (e.g. parcel, pallet) can be checked to ensure that the trip being allocated to the carrier is capable of being handled by that carrier. This can also include full gazetteers.

Tendering

When a 3PC has been selected for a trip, this trip can be tendered to the carrier. Automatic transmission or emailing of trip manifests etc can be configured in the system, or this can be handled manually.

Certain 4PL systems are supported with automatic transmission of transport bookings e.g. LogiNext 4PL.

Acceptance

Like any other own-fleet trip, if the carrier accepts the trip, the trip status should change to ACCEPTED. This can then be resourced like other trips.

Carriers can be configured for free-text or pre-defined list resourcing (like own-fleet). Aptean TMS Calidus Edition can manage the lists of carrier crew and vehicles. If required, this can be linked to external fleet resource management software – currently Calidus TMS supports Aptean Routing & Scheduling Resource management automatically, and FleetCheck external resource management solution. If others are required, these will likely require additional development.

Execution

It is expected that 3PCs will have their own systems for execution, driven by the tendering process above.

Aptean TMS Calidus Edition can support the manual or automatic production of labels for a number of 3rd-party carriers.

Debrief

Aptean TMS Calidus Edition supports a carrier debrief message format that can mark orders as POD/POC and confirm items or line quantities and completion times.

Finance/Invoicing

Like any carrier, a 3rd-party carrier can generate charges for trip cost. Payments can be uploaded for self-bill carriers and a reconciliation process is available for aligning invoices to generated trip costs.