Estimated ship date calculation

The estimated ship date is calculated at the carrier-service level for ship nodes that are selected by the Optimization service for the shipments.

The value of the estimated ship date in the response is as per the Coordinated Universal Time time zone.

The calculation of the estimated ship date is based on following configurations:
  • Required:
    • The time zone of the ship node. This is provided as part of the node configuration.
  • Optional:
    • Lead time of the ship node is defined for node type at carrier-service level.
    • Pickup schedule of the ship node that is defined for node type or ship node at carrier-service level.
    • Shipping calendar of ship node or organization. If the shipping calendar is not provided, all days are considered as working.
    • Cut-off time of ship node.
  • Other Considerations:
    • Backlog days that are calculated at run time are also considered for the calculation of the estimated ship date.

Expected ship date calculation

When the configurations that are used for expected ship date calculation are not configured, the current date time at Coordinated Universal Time time zone is displayed as Expected Ship Date in the Optimization service.

Example

The following information is provided for this example:
  • Node: The ship node candidate in the input to the Optimizer API.
  • Tenant: The customer who is using the Optimizer API.
  • WLP: The server is where the Optimizer API is hosted.
  • Coordinated Universal Time: The Greenwich mean time (GMT) time zone.
  • The time zones and the times are as follows:
    Node Tenant WLP Response
    PST CST EST Coordinated Universal Time
    10 AM 12 midnight 1 PM 6 PM
Consider the scenarios described in the following table.
Table 1. Scenarios for estimated ship date calculation
Configuration Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4
Description The backlog is 1 day Wednesday is a nonworking day Pick-up schedule unavailable on Wednesday Cut-off time is 4 PM at the ship node
Order schedule date (EST) 15 Nov, 2 PM 15 Nov, 1 PM 15 Nov, 1 PM 15 Nov, 10 PM
Node time (PST) 15 Nov, 10 AM 15 Nov, 10 AM 15 Nov, 10 AM 15 Nov, 7 AM
Calendar MTWTF MTTF MTWTF MTWTF
Cut-off None None None 4 PM
Backlog (days) 1 0 0 0
Lead time (minutes) 0 0 0 0
Pickup schedule 10 AM MTWTF 10 AM MTWTF 10 AM MTTF 10 AM MTWTF
Expected ship date 16 Nov, 7 PM (Coordinated Universal Time) 16 Nov, 6 PM (Coordinated Universal Time) 15 Nov, 6 PM (Coordinated Universal Time) 16 Nov, 6 PM (Coordinated Universal Time)
Comment 1 day is added to the time at WLP. It is 11 AM at ship node, which is past the pickup schedule. If the pickup schedule time has passed on particular day, the estimated ship date does not move to the start of next day. Since 15 November is a nonworking day, the start of the next day is considered. Pickup schedule at 10 AM is available at ship node. When the pickup schedule is not configured for a particular day, it is not applied. Since the order is received after the cut-off time of the ship node, the start of the next day is considered. Pickup schedule at 10 AM is available at ship node.