What is the basic flow of events which take place during the process of cost optimizations?

Answer

   
• When a findInventory call is run, cost comes in to picture only when the Landing cost enabled flag is checked. Otherwise number of shipments is considered as the base-mark for cost optimization.
   
• In the presence of landed cost, when findInventory is run, first the possible options are obtained based on the sourcing rules.
   
• Then optimization comes into picture (scheduling rules). Here, when cost is the optimization criterion; all the configured costs are considered, that is the handling cost and the item cost at one go.
   
• In this same step, there is an internal call to the determineRouting API which checks for the carrier. Now, if the costs are handled through the getTransportationCost UE, it gets invoked, else the transportation cost is calculated using the transportation cost configured at the landed cost level (based on distance covered).

Using this process the entire cost is calculated and the best cost effective option is chosen.

   
• Please note that if all the options have the same cost, then the node having highest priority will become the ShipNode and if all options are form the same node, then the earliest delivery date option is selected.