Carrier selection in SAP Transportation Management (TM) optimizes freight management by focusing on the lowest cost option and ensuring transparency, as detailed in SAP documentation. It "leverages the Vehicle Scheduling and Routing (VSR) optimizer, which aims to find the lowest cost solution by assigning freight units to vehicles/resources and determining the route and sequence to minimize total costs, including non-delivery/execution penalties, earliness and lateness penalties, fixed costs per vehicle or tour, travel-dependent costs, load-dependent costs, and sustainability costs such as CO2 emissions." The process "can be performed manually or automatically, aiming to assign the most cost-effective carrier while considering defined constraints. Automatic carrier selection uses an optimization run to determine the most cost-effective carrier based on selected options."

Transparency is enhanced as "the transportation proposal functionality provides alternative transportation options for freight units, differing in routing, means of transport, and time required. These proposals are displayed in a configurable layout, such as tables or maps, allowing planners to compare options based on criteria like lowest cost, shortest duration, carriers assigned, departure days, and routes. This visibility helps planners make informed decisions." It supports "broader transportation planning, which also includes creating transportation requirements from documents like sales orders or purchase orders, forming freight units, and generating transportation proposals to visualize options, all contributing to efficient and transparent freight management."

This functionality outperforms automating procurement or improving production planning, as it directly targets cost minimization and process clarity in global logistics. (Extracts from: https://learning.sap.com/learning-journeys/exploring-business-processes-in-sap-s-4hana-cloud-private-edition-transportation-management/planning-automatically-using-the-optimizer-and-proposal; https://learning.sap.com/learning-journeys/applying-supply-chain-execution-in-sap-s-4hana-cloud-private-edition/planning-transportation).