To maintain data integrity, RMS provides a way to identify suspect shipping instruction records.
The most common way to do this is to check Not Attached and Duplicate radio buttons in Step 1 on the Review shipping instructions window and click OK. RMS will return a list of shipping instructions that are Not Attached and/or Duplicate.
Definitions:
Attached: the shipping instruction has been identified by RMS to be the record related to a particular trip cycle record. RMS makes this relation by comparing the shipping instruction Ship Date and Load/Empty Status with the trip cycle Release Date and Load/Empty Status. If the two dates differ within the specified plus or minus days (you set the number of days in Reference Values: RelateBOLDays), then it "attaches" or relates the two records.
Not Attached: The two dates mentioned in the Attached definition do NOT differ within the specified plus or minus days range.
Duplicate: the shipping instruction COULD, but is NOT attached to a trip cycle because there is already another shipping instruction attached to the trip cycle record.
If RMS identifies duplicates, you will want to look at the identical shipping instructions (done by including the Attached shipping instructions) and then determine which ones you wish to delete. If you delete the shipping instructions that are Attached to the trip cycle, RMS will automatically attach the best matching remaining shipping instruction to the cycle. Duplicates can be caused by human error while entering shipping instruction records into RMS or a waybill may have been cancelled and reissued by a rail carrier.
If RMS identifies unattached shipping instructions, this may indicate that the trip cycle has been mis-created due to a data reporting error. The most common data reporting error is when a rail carrier reports a railcar as empty when it is really loaded or vice versa. This causes RMS to prematurely terminate the existing trip cycle and prematurely start another trip cycle.
Note:
You should only review shipping instructions that are dated prior to the last time you ran the Create Cycles procedure. The Create Cycles procedure creates new trip cycle records. If the new trip cycle records have not been created yet, RMS will display many of the recent shipping instructions where Not Attached = TRUE, however this is not really an indicator of a problem yet because the shipping instructions cannot attach to a trip cycle record that doesn't exist yet. Cycles are created usually every night during the scheduled Import Data and Create Cycles procedure. It is not recommend to Create Cycles during the day as it is a batch operation and can take a long time (depend on the size of your fleet and how much history is stored, but it is usually not longer than 1 hour) to run and may slow down other online applications. Talk to your IT department if you need to Create Cycles during the day.