One of the elements comprising a company's total supply chain management costs. These costs consist of the following:
1. New Product Release Phase In and Maintenance: This includes costs associated with releasing new products to the field, maintaining released products, assigning product ID, defining configurations and packaging, publishing availability schedules, release letters and updates, and maintaining product databases.
2. Create Customer Order: This includes costs associated with creating and pricing configurations to order and preparing customer order documents.
3. Order Entry and Maintenance: This includes costs associated with maintaining the customer database, credit check, accepting new orders, and adding them to the order system, as well as later order modifications.
4.Contract/Program and Channel Management: This includes costs related to contract negotiation, monitoring progress, and reporting against the customer's contract, including administration of performance or warranty-related issues.
5. Installation Planning: This includes costs associated with installation engineering, scheduling and modification, handling cancellations, and planning the installation.
6. Order Fulfillment: This includes costs associated with order processing, inventory allocation, ordering from internal or external suppliers, shipment scheduling, order status reporting, and shipment initiation.
7. Distribution: This includes costs associated with warehouse space and management, finished goods receiving and stocking, processing shipments, picking and consolidating, selecting carriers, and staging products/systems.
8. Transportation, Outbound Freight, and Duties: This includes costs associated with all company-paid freight duties from point of manufacturer to end customer or channel.
9. Installation: This includes costs associated with verification of site preparation, installation, certification, and authorization of billing.
10. Customer Invoicing/Accounting: This includes costs associated with invoicing, processing customer payments, and verification of customer receipt.