Despatches by Barge (Service Trips)
A service trip is a despatch of material by barge. Despatching by barge involves transporting bulk material or discrete units along a barge route from a loading location to an unloading location and all associated activities (for example, sampling). Despatch orders can be associated with a service trip to provide the link between sales or purchase contracts and the despatched material. Service charges can be added to calculate the costs of freight or other services that can be invoiced.
Service trips can be created from a template. The template defines the route and may define default process flows and stockpiles for loading and unloading transactions.
See Barge and Service Trip Configuration for information about barges, barge transport classes, barge types, tugs and service trip templates.
Service Trip Creation
Use the Barge Explorer to create, view and edit service trips; and to create multiple service trips from a template.
Alternatively, you can create individual service trips from the (right-click) context menu of a service trip template in the Solution Explorer.
Service Trip Status
If the Service Trip status definition exists, when you create a service trip, the service trip is assigned the initial status. This status definition controls whether the service trip is editable and selectable. See Status Definitions.
Barge Laycans
The laycan is the period during which the barge owner must indicate that the barge is at the barge terminal and ready for loading.
The word 'laycan' is a combination of 'laydays' and 'cancelling', which are the first and last days of the period. The charterer does not have to accept the barge until the laydays date, even if the barge is ready earlier. If the barge is not ready by the cancelling date, the charterer may reject the barge.
Loading and Unloading Barges
For bulk material, the transfer of material from a stockpile onto a barge is a service trip loading transaction and the transfer of material from the barge to a stockpile is a service trip unloading transaction. A process flow with the loading barge terminal or port as a destination is required for service trip bulk loading. A process flow with the unloading barge terminal or port as a source is required for service trip bulk unloading. See Create a Process Flow.
For discrete units (DUs), the transfer of packages or package groups from a warehouse onto a barge is a service trip loading movement and the transfer of packages or package groups from the barge to a warehouse is a service trip unloading movement. A movement flow with the loading barge terminal or port as a destination is required for service trip DU loading. A movement flow with the unloading barge terminal or port as a source is required for service trip DU unloading. See Create a Movement Flow.
When predefined routes are used for a service trip, the Loading Only, Unloading Only or Both setting for the route point locations is inherited from the barge route. See Create a Barge Route.
When dynamic routes are defined, whether a route point location is Loading Only, Unloading Only or Both is determined by whether material flows (that is, process flows or movement flows) exist from or to that location. If material flows only exist from that location, the activity at the route point is deemed to be Loading. If material flows only exist to that location, the activity at the route point is deemed to be Unloading. If material flows exist from and to that location, the activity can be either Loading or Unloading, with Loading used as the default.
For service trips created from a template, the template defines the route and other information. See Set up a Service Trip Template.
Draft Surveys and DU Draft Surveys
A draft survey with a back calculation corrects the quantities of the bulk loading or unloading transactions. A draft survey may be useful if measurements taken by a draft surveyor are available and the calculation of the loaded or unloaded mass is more accurate than the measurements recorded by loading or unloading equipment.
A discrete unit (DU) draft survey with a back calculation corrects the quantities of the DU loading or unloading movements.
Activities Common to all Despatch Types
For information about despatch states, load states, direct loading between despatch types, despatch quality, traceability, costs and service charges, see Despatches - Common Activities.
