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The Concept Of Total Cost Of Ownership Or Tco

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Introduction:
The concept of total cost of ownership or TCO (Cavinato 1991, 1992), life cycle costing (Jackson and Ostrom 1980), product life cycle costs (Shields and Young 1991), and total cost of (Ellram and Siferd 1993) are all related. There is no unique definition of TCO, since the meaning of TCO is dependent on individual and function of organization (Ellram, 1994).
TCO concept suggests that supply managers adopt a long-term perspective, rather than short-term, for accurate evaluation of buying conditions. Three ideas formulate procurement functions:

1) Cost must be examined from a long-term perspective and include costs other than initial purchase price.
2) Consider the impact of other business functions related to a specific purchase.
3) Understand & measure, the impact of “non-value added” costs like service costs, failure costs, administrative costs, and maintenance (Ellram, 1994) associated with the purchase.

Depending on the goals of the project, a TCO analysis supports decisions on operational, tactical, or strategic level.
Today, TCO analysis is used to support acquisition and planning decisions for a wide range of assets that bring significant maintenance or operating costs across ownership life. Total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis is centre stage when management is faced with acquisition decisions for computing systems, vehicles, buildings, laboratory equipment, medical equipment, factory machines etc.
TCO analysis for these kinds of assets is in

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