Vendor Admission & Task-Order Eligibility
Whether a vendor may be placed on a task order, and which of several vendors to prefer. HARD rules are admission gates — a breach makes the placement infeasible and the certificate names the rule that blocked it. SOFT rules are cost and risk the buyer may knowingly accept, carried as weighted penalties so a cheaper vendor with worse tariff exposure can lose to a dearer one that carries none. Same manifest the allocation optimizes against, so the workbook's rule callouts and the solver's constraints cannot drift apart.
Objectives#
What the solver optimizes. Enabled objectives are weighed together.
| Objective | What it means | Direction | On by default | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Minimize Expected Landed Costminimize_expected_landed_cost | Blended rate plus duty already in force plus the probability-weighted cost of duty not yet in force. The pending component is a FORECAST, which is why it is separated from the rate rather than folded into one number. | minimize | Yes | 1.0 |
Problem inputs#
The setup values you send with a problem. The console renders them as form fields.
| Input | Name | Type | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
current_tariff_ceiling_pct | Duty-in-Force Ceiling (%) | number | No | 15.0 | Duty already payable above this share of value breaks the category's price assumptions. |
pending_tariff_ceiling_pct | Proposed-Duty Tolerance (%) | number | No | 25.0 | A proposed rate above this would materially change landed cost before delivery. Soft, not hard: a buyer may accept exposure they can hedge, but it must be accepted explicitly rather than by default. |
Constraints#
A hard constraint must hold or the problem is infeasible; a soft one adds a penalty when broken.
| Constraint | What it requires | Kind | On by default |
|---|---|---|---|
Registration Must Be Currentregistration_current | A vendor may not be placed on a task order unless its public registration is ACTIVE. Read from the registry extract, which is a periodic snapshot — its staleness is reported with the answer rather than hidden. | hard | Yes |
Vendor Must Be Active Internallyvendor_active | A dormant vendor has no current commercial relationship and cannot be assigned work. | hard | Yes |
No Sanctions Exposureno_sanctions_exposure | A vendor is ineligible when it or a controlling owner carries a sanctions designation. Evaluated against the controlling entity reached through the ownership chain, not against the vendor's own name — the exposure is usually indirect, which is the whole reason the chain is modelled. | hard | Yes |
Capability Matchcapability_match | The vendor must supply the capability the task order requires. | hard | Yes |
Duty In Force Within Tolerancetariff_within_tolerance | Duty already payable on this vendor's goods, penalized above the ceiling. | soft | Yes |
Proposed Tariffs Do Not Put The Award At Riskpending_tariff_risk | A proposed duty above tolerance is a forecast, not a fact — penalized rather than blocking, so the buyer sees the trade-off instead of losing the option. | soft | Yes |