This Function shall be capable of providing the following facilities:<br/><br/>(1) The ability to receive the basic data from which a new Freight Transport Plan is to be produced, e.g. number of Freight Transport Load Items, their origin(s) and destination(s) and their expected departure/arrival times, plus the type of Freight Vehicle needed and any route constraints.<br/>(2) Based on the content of the data objects in (1) above, the ability to request other functionality to provide data objects containing details of the road network, plus historic, current and predicted traffic data, weather data and any relevant previous Freight Transport Execution Plan data.<br/>(3) If required by the data objects received in (1), request data objects containing details of services to be provided by other modes of transport and third party service providers.<br/>(4) The ability to combine all the data objects collected in (1), (2) and (3) above, together with data objects showing the previous performance of other modes of transport and third party service providers to create a comprehensive set of data objects from which a Freight Transport Execution Plan can be prepared by other functionality.<br/>
(a) continuously monitor for receipt of the collect data for FTEP preparation data flow from the Prepare FTEP for Implementation function;<br/>(b) when the data flow in (a) has been received, extract the geographic locations of the origin, destination and any way points from the FTEP data it contains and send them in the request road network data flow to the Collect Road Network Data function;<br/>(c) as a result of (b), monitor for receipt of the data flow requested road network data from the Collect Road Network Data function and add its content to the FTEP data;<br/>(d) if the FTEP data shows that other non-road based transport modes need to be involved in the FTEP implementation, send the data flow request multi-modal service data to the Multi-Modal Systems Terminator and monitor for receipt of the data flow requested multi-modal service data in response;<br/>(e) when the data flow in (d) is received, add its content to the FTEP data and check to see if the FTEP data include the need for services available from a third party service provider are required;<br/>(f) if the check in (e) is positive send a request for details of the services available from third parties to the Third Party Freight Service Provider Terminator in the request service availability data flow;<br/>(g) as a result of (f) monitor for receipt of the service availability response data flow from the Third Party Freight Service Provider Terminator and add its content to the FTEP data;<br/>(h) assemble all the data provided by (a) to (g) above into the data for FTEP preparation data flow and send it to the Prepare FTEP function.<br/>
