Demurrage

The carrier charges and fees are applied when rail freight cars and ships are retained beyond a specific loading or unloading time. Also, see Detention.

Denied Party List (DPL)

A listing of all the entities with whom a company cannot do business due to company policy or government requirements, the Export DPL list is based on information supplied by the United States Government Federal Register and other sources.

Density

A physical characteristic of a commodity is its mass per unit volume or pounds per cubic foot. This is an important factor in rate making, as density affects the utilization of a carrier's vehicle.

Density Rate

A rate based on the density and shipment weight.

Department of Energy (DOE)

Cabinet-level department in the United States Government, charged with developing energy and safety policies and guidelines regarding the handling of nuclear material within the United States.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Cabinet-level department in the United States government responsible for protecting the United States from terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Depot

A location where a substance is stored, usually for later utilization, is called a storage facility. A repair depot, on the other hand, is a location or facility where assets are rebuilt or repaired.

Deregulation

Revisions or complete elimination of economic regulations controlling transportation occurred. The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 and the Staggers Act of 1980 revised the economic controls over motor carriers and railroads, while the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 eliminated economic controls over air carriers.

Derived Demand

A term in economics, where the demand for one good or service occurs as a result of the demand for another. This may occur as the former is a part of the production of the second. For example, the demand for coal leads to derived demand for mining, as coal must be mined for it to be consumed.

Design for Manufacture / Assembly (DFMA)

A product design methodology that provides a quantitative evaluation of product designs.

Design of Experiments (DoE)

A branch of applied statistics dealing with planning, conducting, analyzing, and interpreting controlled tests to evaluate the factors that control the value of a parameter or group of parameters.

Destination-Enhanced Consolidation

Ganging of smaller shipments to cut costs, often as directed by a system or via pooling with a third party.

Detention Fee

The carrier charges and fees are applied when rail freight cars, ships, and carriers are retained beyond a specified loading or unloading time. Also, see Demurrage and Express.

Deterministic Models

A mathematical model is one in which outcomes are precisely determined through known relationships among states and events, without any room for random variation. In such models, a given input will always produce the same output, such as in a known chemical reaction. In comparison, stochastic models use ranges of values for variables in the form of probability distributions.

DFMA

A product design methodology that provides a quantitative evaluation of product designs.

DGI

Those items that have been returned have been delivered damaged and have a freight claim outstanding or have been damaged in some way during warehouse handling.

DHS

Cabinet-level department in the United States government responsible for protecting the United States from terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Dial Up

Access a network by dialing a phone number or initiating a computer to dial the number. The dial-up line connects to the network access point via a node or a PAD.

Differential

A discount offered by a carrier that faces a service time disadvantage over a route.

Differentiation

In the postponement supply chain model, this is the point where an end product assumes unique characteristics through final assembly configuration and/or packaging.

Digital Signature

Electronically generated, digitized (as opposed to graphically created) authorization that is uniquely linkable and traceable to an empowered officer.

Direct Channel

Your own sales force sells to the customer. Your entity may ship to the customer, or a third party may handle shipment, but in either case, your entity owns the sales contract and retains rights to the receivable from the customer.

Direct Cost

A cost that can be directly traced to a cost object since a direct or repeatable cause-and-effect relationship exists. A direct cost uses a direct assignment or cost causal relationship to transfer costs. Direct costs can consist of materials used and labor directly involved in production. Also, see Indirect Cost and Tracing.

Direct Debit (DD)

A method of ACH collection is used when the debtor gives authorization to debit his or her account upon the receipt of an entry issued by a creditor. See also automated clearinghouse.

Directed Tasks

Tasks that can be completed based on detailed information provided by the computer system. An order picking task, where the computer details the specific item, location, and quantity to pick, is an example of a directed task.

Direct Production Material

Material that is used in the manufacturing/content of a product (for example, purchased parts, solder, SMT glues, adhesives, mechanical parts, etc., bill-of-materials parts, etc.).

Direct product profitability (DPP)

Calculation of the net profit contribution attributable to a specific product or product line.

Direct Retail Locations

A retail location that purchases products directly from your organization or responding entity.

Direct Store Delivery (DSD)

The process of shipping directly from a manufacturer's plant or distribution center to the customer's retail store, thus bypassing the customer's distribution center, is called Direct-to-Store Delivery.

Direct-to-Store (DTS) Delivery

Same as direct store delivery.

Direct Transmission

A transmission whereby data is exchanged directly between sender and receiver computers, without an intervening third-party service, is called a point-to-point transmission.

DISA

The secretariat provides clerical and administrative support to the ASC X12 Committee.

Disaster Recovery Planning

Contingency planning specifically relates to the recovery of hardware and software, such as data centers, application software, operations, personnel, and telecommunications, during information system outages.

Discontinuous Demand

A material demand pattern where periods of demand are separated by periods with little or no demand, similar to a cyclical demand pattern but without any expected cyclical pattern. Synonym: Lumpy Demand.

Discrete Manufacturing

Discrete manufacturing processes create products by assembling unconnected, distinct parts, as in the production of distinct items such as automobiles, appliances, or computers.

Discrete Order Picking

An order picking method where each individual order is picked, line by line, prior to beginning the picking of another order. Also, see Batch Picking, Order Picking, Zone Picking.

Discrete Order Quantity

A production planning technique that generates planned orders in quantities equal to the net customer order requirements in each period. See Lot for Lot.

Disintermediation

When the traditional sales channels are disassembled and the middleman is cut out of the deal, such as when the manufacturer ships directly to a retailer, bypassing the distributor.

Dispatching

The carrier activities involved in controlling equipment involve arranging for fuel, drivers, crews, equipment, and terminal space.

Distributed Inventory

Inventory that is geographically dispersed, for example, where a company maintains inventory in multiple distribution centers, is done to provide a higher level of customer service.

Distribution

The activities associated with moving materials from source to destination can be associated with movement from a manufacturer or distributor to customers, retailers, or other secondary warehousing/distribution points.

Distribution Center (DC)

The warehouse facility holds inventory from manufacturing, pending distribution to the appropriate stores.

Distribution Channel

One or more companies or individuals participate in the flow of goods and services from the manufacturer to the final user or consumer.

Distribution Channel Management

The organizational and pipeline strategy for getting products to customers is known as logistics. Direct channels involve company sales forces, facilities, and/or direct shipments to customers. Indirect channels, on the other hand, involve the use of wholesalers, distributors, and/or other parties to supply the products to customers. Many companies utilize both strategies, depending on the markets and their effectiveness.

Distribution On Demand (DOD)

The order fulfillment state that a distribution operation achieves is when it can respond, closest to real-time, to changes in demand while shipping 100 percent customer-compliant orders at the least cost.

Distribution Planning

The process involved in planning for distribution activities includes inbound/outbound transportation, warehouse management, setting inventory levels, putaway and picking, packaging and loading, and various administrative functions.

Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP)

A system for determining inventory demands at distribution centers and consolidating demand information in reverse as input to the production and materials system.

Distribution Resource Planning (DRP II)

A computerized system that integrates distribution with manufacturing by identifying requirements for finished goods and producing schedules for inventory and its movement within the distribution process. Distribution resource planning systems receive data on sales forecasts, customer orders, and delivery requirements, available inventory, logistics, and manufacturing and purchasing lead times. This data is analyzed to produce a time-phased schedule of resource requirements that is matched against existing supply sources and production schedules to identify the actions that must be taken to synchronize supply and demand.