OTM-Kewill Rating

[nipunlakhotia]

Hi all,

We have single shipment with 10 ship units (10LB each).

As per our understanding, Kewill is used for Parcel rating, each ship unit is rated independently, MPS discount is applied (if applicable) and consolidated cost is returned to OTM

1. Instead of one consolidated cost, can Kewill return cost per ship unit ? If so, does that require any configuration in OTM?
2. Also, can we force Kewill to rate based on per shipment - instead of 10 different ship units, rating should consider single shipment with load of 100LB?

Regards
Nipun

[kewill_maven]

Re: OTM-Kewill Rating

Hello,
Parcel does not rate the same as freight; in your example: 10 packages at 10lb each will not have the same rate as a single 100lb package. You can be off by as much as 40% depending on the carrier (and all parcel carriers rate differently - they do not follow the North American Motor Freight Transportation Standards, or any other rating standards).
You also mentioned an MPS discount (MPS usually stands for Multi-Peice Shipment).For clarity: the discount name varies by carrier, and has specific criteria that needs to be met. A CWT shipment (Hudred-Weight Shipment, C = roman numeral for 100) can be contracted with UPS and MWT (Multi-Weight Shipment) with FedEx, as two examples. Both provide discounts for multi-peice shipments going to the same named receipient (if the weight criteria is met).
UPS and FedEx have a 150lb limit for any single peice. It also has minimum requirements for each individual peice and total aggregate wieght minimum in order to qualify for CWT or MWT pricing. If you sent Kewill a UPS or FedEx ground shipment of over 150lbs, it would reply that you have exceeded the weight limit for that service. A common total aggregate wieght minimum for CWT or MWT pricing is 200lb (but can be negotiated). This exceeds the single peice minimum.

In the past customers tried to put parcel rates into the freight model and realized the inaccuracies - that is why OTM developed the interface and the ability to ship the individual peices.

[nipunlakhotia]

Re: OTM-Kewill Rating

Hi,

When we use OTM planning, we only send Order release (ship units, weight, volume etc.) details to Kewill and Kewill should should return best possible rates - it can either be Parcel or Freight rate.

If some load qualify for both parcel as well as freight (like in above example), will kewill return both rates to OTM? and OTM select least cost among them?

Note:
We are not pre-specifying any specific FedeX service (Parcel/Freight) at order release level.

Regards
Nipun

[kewill_maven]

Re: OTM-Kewill Rating

For planning - OTM is always the decision engine. While Kewill can pass freight rates, - the implementations I have been involved with have used OTM's existing freight rating capabilities, and used Kewill for Parcel rates. OTM collects all the rates and then processes them; All of the rules for determing what to choose are in OTM and OTM does the comparison.

While there can be simple rules for a single shipment (fastest method, cheapest method, etc..) OTM can look beyond any single shipment, and that's a powerful reason for having a planning tool as sophisticated as OTM; OTM can look across ALL of the orders.

For example consider a large number of orders going from Boston (both parcel and freight) across the USA to many different customers, but all in the Los Angeles area. OTM can decide to combine parcels and freight on an LTL or TL shipment, place the parcels in the UPS LA HUB (this is called zone skipping or hub induction) and then deliver the freight to the LA customer. Configured rules in OTM would execute this type of complex decision making. OTM does this by asking for parcel rates directly from Boston, and then again from the inducted LA hub, and compares the savings between the two, against the incremental cost in adding parcels to the freight leg.