What is the Planned Date?
The planned date is a specific day when an operation, such as delivery, or shipment release, is supposed to initiate or end. These dates are crucial in shipping and logistics as they allow a shipping company to ensure all the required resources to complete or start a task are available in time.
Significance of Planned Date in an E-commerce Shipping and Delivery
Planned dates are the holy grail of planning and completing tasks within a certain period in shipping and logistics. It helps in the following aspects:
- Resource streamlining: A planned date is used as a deadline either to start or complete a shipping operation. Using panned dates allows a shipping company to streamline its resources most effectively to ensure optimum usage.
- Accuracy and estimation: Freeing up resources within a specific time is one part of the job. Using a planned date for every shipping operation provides the freight forwarder with an accurate transit time estimation. Based on that, a partner shipping company must streamline the required workforce and resources to deliver the service within the estimated delivery.
Prerequisites of Planned Date and How It Works
The primary and only prerequisite of a planned date is its format. The format used for writing a planned date is YYYY-MM-DD. As a delivery cycle encompasses the effort of several third-party collaborators, a globally accepted planned date format reduces confusion.
Once a delivery lifecycle is divided into smaller cycles, planned dates are assigned for each cycle’s start and end. These dates are then shared with the respective parties. A shipping company primarily accompanies the mentioned task.
Use Case with Planned Date
A shipment was supposed to arrive at a storage unit in Manila on 2nd December 2022. Therefore the planned date was mentioned as 2022-12-02.