Solution : https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/380848 (SAP Service marketplace login required)
Key words : 
shipment document flow table vtfa, symptom long runtimes occur, additional key words sd_vttksaravtarsdvttkwrperformanceruntime, shipment number vtfa-tknum, shipment cost documents, key field tknum, field vtfa-tknum, table vtfa, object sd_vttk, shipping units
Related Notes : 
       
| 564019 | Access to VTFA for the DB2 database takes long | 
| 394413 | Long runtime when displaying shipment | 
| 369658 | SD document flow: Long runtimes when reading transport doc. | 
| 317316 | |
| 129385 | Database hints in Open SQL |