Purpose
Provides comparison between TD and TSW
Overview
Explains the similarities and differences between TD and TSW
Both TD and TSW deal with the Logistics scheduling and execution part of the supply chain management. This involves planning for the movement of goods which is scheduling and the execution part which takes care of the activities involved when physically goods movement happens.
On a high level both have the same process flow but the volume of data involved differs in both the cases. Here are some salient features and differentiating factors in these two modules.
1)TD is generally used for road/rail movements involving trucks and rail wagons where the volume of oil/minerals transported is not that high when compared to a marine scenario involving huge vessels which generally uses TSW.
2) When huge volumes are involved there would a lot of planning required and TSW has an extensive planning mechanism which suits such business scenarios. TSW nomination tool(which takes care of the planning part) can do an extensive planning for bulk data and also communicate the same to the various partners involved and get back confirmation from all the stakeholders of that movement before proceeding.
For movements involving trucks there is a requirement of detailed level planning at the vehicle level which is handled well in TD, planning can be done at the level of compartments in a vehicle through TD.
3) TD also involves calculating the costs of a shipment and distributing the costs to the various partners involved during the course of the shipment which TSW doesn't handle.
4) One decision criterion: if it's your own vehicle we have more benefits in using TD (standalone or in combination with TSW!). we have the real execution more under control like compartment planning, event handling, driver assignment, etc. If we are using external transportation providers, we maybe do not need this. Therefore some companies do not use TD for their truck transportation execution.
5) Overall TSW is a planning tool with can support some execution features (with or without TD). Real good execution is supported with TD but planning with TD is rather fixed and not flexible. In TD it is more an assignment than a real planning, so for short-term planning of trucks, this is sufficient, for long-term planning like marine and pipeline it's not. TSW can play 'what-if' scenarios, have a stock projection in future, etc.
6) TD is focusing on execution like management of correct material movements incl. gains and losses, shipment cost calculation, etc. Interface are there to do e.g. truck scheduling optimization with an external tools (Transportation Planning Interface), getting external measurements in (Terminal Automation System Interface and Interface for Delivery Confirmation), etc. Additional strong execution arguments for TD are: close integration to TDP, HPM, Exchanges, etc.
TSW is focusing on planning and a flexible execution.
Can TSW replace TD? Definitely NO
we can not replace TSW by TD for planning of marine and pipeline movements! Some companies use other tools to do so, but TD can not take that over (some companies still use complex Excels for this!). we can use TD for pure execution, but not for playing around with future stock, 'what-ifs', etc. Therefore TSW can be used on top of TD - that was also the architectural goal and not rebuild some existing stuff. TSW has the flexible movement scenario handling to support also non-TD movements which e.g. is a big benefit in the current discussion with Cargill and other non-Oil&Gas customers.
Please also consider that TSW is priced separately and this played a role at some companies evaluating this - TD is part of IS-Oil downstream. We would say depending on the business scenario one of these modules would be more suitable. One cant be replaced by another. TSW can be known as a glorified version of TD
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