Transportation planning with system assisted exception resolution

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• accessing a set of transportation orders, where a transportation order includes one or more of, a commodity identifying data, an amount data, a request date data, an earliest acceptable date data, a latest acceptable date data, a scheduled ship date data, a scheduled arrival date data, and a promised delivery date data;
• accessing an actionable plan of loads, where a load includes one or more of, a route data, a mode data, a carrier data, a service data, a schedule data, and a vehicle data;
• identifying a planning exception related to the transportation plan, where identifying a planning exception includes identifying one or more of, an unassigned order, and a load that violates a constraint, where the constraint concerns one or more of, a carrier load rule, a carrier rule, a compatibility rule, a ship set rule, an arrival set rule, a carrier service dimension rule, a late delivery rule, an early delivery rule, a late pick-up rule, an early pick-up rule, an effective vehicle capacity rule, a carrier standing appointment rule, a facility receiving calendar rule, a facility receiving hour of operation rule, a facility shipping calendar rule, a facility shipping hour of operation rule, a carrier commitment rule, a vehicle availability rule, a facility dock availability rule, and a facility handling capacity rule;
• automatically identifying a candidate planning action for resolving the planning exception, where identifying a candidate planning action includes identifying one or more of, an amount data, a scheduled ship date data, a scheduled arrival date data, a route data, a mode data, a carrier data, a service data, and a vehicle data to change to resolve the exception, and where the constraint is configurable with respect to one or more of, a threshold level, a major violation level, a minor violation level, and a penalty cost;
• providing a first data concerning an impact on the transportation plan associated with resolving the planning exception using the candidate planning action, where the first data identifies one or more of, a change in cost attributable to resolving the planning exception using the candidate planning action, and a change in utility attributable to resolving the planning exception using the candidate planning action;
• providing a second data concerning a constraint that would be violated if the planning exception is resolved using the candidate planning action;
• and
• selectively updating the actionable plan of loads based, at least in part, on the candidate planning action, the first data, and the second data, where the candidate planning action is automatically taken to manipulate the actionable plan of loads upon determining that the candidate planning action will reduce the cost of the transportation plan.

A computer-based system configured to manipulate a transportation plan, comprising:

• a data store configured to store data concerning one or more of, a transportation planning model, a transportation plan, and a set of orders, where the transportation plan includes data concerning a set of loads;
• a first logic configured to identify a planning exception related to an order in the set of orders or related to a load in the set of loads;
• and
• a second logic configured to provide data concerning a transportation planning action configured to resolve the exception.

In a computer system having a graphical user interface comprising a display and a selection device, a method of providing and selecting from a set of data entries on the display, the method comprising:

• retrieving a set of data entries, where a data entry represents an action associated with manipulating a transportation plan based on an automatically generated planning action configured to resolve an exception;
• displaying the set of data entries on the display;
• receiving a data entry selection signal indicative of the selection device selecting a selected data entry;
• and
• in response to the data entry selection signal, initiating an operation associated with the selected data entry.

A computer-implemented method for producing a computer-assisted resolution to a transportation planning exception, comprising:

• generating a transportation plan;
• identifying an exception in the transportation plan;
• and
• resolving the exception by manipulating the transportation plan.