Distance Engine in Transportation Manager refers to a unique combination of vendor application (for example, Rand McNally IntelliRoute, ALK Associates PC*Miler, i2 Distance, Telogis) and route type (for example, shortest, practical, air, etc.).
Each Distance Engine defined in Transportation Manager corresponds to an External Engine Version that is associated with an External Engine where the External Engine Type is "Distance Transit Time Engine". Distance Engines are used to control the way in which a third-party distance engine will be used to calculate distances between locations. In most cases, Distance Engines are also used to compute transit time between locations. Calculations can be based on address, postal code, or geocode data (which itself can also be computed by most third-party distance engines).
The third-party distance retrieval products supported by Transportation Manager are:
You can assign a distance engine to each country. You can also define an override distance engine for a tariff.
In cases where an override distance engine for a tariff is not applicable, if you are computing a distance between points in a country, or between points in different countries where the same distance engine has been assigned, then the distance is calculated by the applicable distance engine. When Transportation Manager needs to retrieve a distance between locations in countries that use different distance engines, or if a distance engine is not available for one of both of the applicable countries, the distance will be computed by using a formulae that uses the applicable geocodes and the Distance Adjustments defined in the Global Settings in the Environment Module. For more information, see Global Settings – Distance Adjustment (Employee)
When computing a distance as part of the routing/rating/scheduling process for a tariff where an override distance engine has been defined, all required distances will be retrieved using the designated distance engine.
Transportation Manager can be configured to perform distance/transit time retrieval requests to a third-party distance application in several different ways.
For example: The default Distance Engine for the United States may use PC*Miler with a Route Type of "Practical" while a specific tariff covering lanes in the United States may use PC*Miler with a Route Type of "Shortest". When distances are required to route/rate a load moving within the USA for the tariff with the override Distance Engine, the TM Distance Engine Interface will call PC*Miler using the Route Type "Shortest". When distances are required to route/rate the same load using a tariff where an override Distance Engine has not been specified, the TM Distance Engine Interface will call PC*Miler using the Route Type "Practical".