Cost to Serve Report

This page shows more details about the costs shown on the Cost Report page. It gives a clearer picture of how different types of costs correspond to demand at a particular location.

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Note

These costs are an approximation of the actual cost breakdown, as there are some assumptions made that might not apply to every situation.

  • The fixed costs are evenly distributed over the total throughput, while in reality, this cost might be different for different products. So if 100,000 units flow through a DC with a $1M fixed cost, each unit will get $10 of fixed cost assigned to it.

  • If one product comes from multiple locations (with different costs) into a particular location, the model does not have sufficient information to sort out the exact cost per product and customer, so we take the average cost per product based on the total cost for that product. This means that the cost shown may not be the actual cost per product and customer, but the sum of the cost breakdown is consistent with the total costs shown on the Cost Report page.

Location selection

Select a location by clicking on a node in the map. The cost charts will show the data for the selected location. You can zoom, scroll, and reset the map focus to the default area (from the action menu widget-action in the top right corner).

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Cost breakdown

This bar chart shows the breakdown of the total cost per unit to deliver to the selected location.

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The selected location is shown in the title bar. The side panel shows the Legend for the colors. The tooltips on this chart also provide more detailed information about the type of cost, the actual cost, and the share of the total.

You can toggle between the breakdown cost per unit or for the total demand (from the action menu widget-action in the top right corner of the chart).

Cost Breakdown Levels

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Breakdown per unit

This table shows you more details about where the costs are incurred. For example, you can see which DC/Production facility contributed to the fixed cost, and how much, or which transportation lanes made up the secondary transport cost.

You can toggle between the breakdown cost per unit or for the total demand (from the action menu widget-action in the top right corner of the chart).

Inter-resource cost

This table summarizes the cost which occurs when products are transported between resources.

You can toggle between the breakdown cost per unit or for the total demand (from the action menu widget-action in the top right corner of the chart).

Overview of cost breakdown for all demand

This table contains the cost breakdown per demand location and per product. In the first columns you can find the normal costs and then a total. After those there are custom costs (if included any in the dataset) and then the total custom cost. After the custom costs there are custom objectives costs (if included any in the dataset) and then the total custom objective cost. At last there is a Grand Total column which sums up the three mentioned totals.

Note

Custom objective costs only appear in the table and counted in the Grand Total, if they are included in the optimization objective at the Optimization Options page.

You can toggle between data for all locations and the selected location only (from the action menu widget-action in the top right corner of the chart).

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The data interpretation is supported by the filters on the side panels, which are Product Filter and DC Filter. For more about filters go to Filtering in Network Design.

Overview of custom objective (natural unit) breakdown for all demand

This table is similar to the previous table, as it is a breakdown per demand location and per product. However, it does not contain costs, but custom objectives in their natural unit. There is a sum after the columns of every custom custom objectives, but there could be no Grand Total calculated as they are in different units.

Note

This table always show this data, regardless if they are included in the optimization objective at the Optimization Options page or not.

The resulting tables looks like this:

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Also in this table, you can toggle between data for all locations and the selected location only (from the action menu widget-action in the top right corner of the chart) and this table is also supported by the same filters as the previous table.