On Order Policies for a Perishable Product in Retail

We study an inventory control problem of a perishable product with fixed short shelf life in Dutch retail practice. The demand is non-stationary during the week but stationary over weeks, mixed LIFO and FIFO withdrawal. supermarket uses service level requirement. A difficulty that age-distribution products stock not always known. Hence, challenge to derive practical efficient order policies deal situations where this information either available or lacking. present optimal policy case age distribution known, compare it benchmarks from literature. Three heuristics have been developed do require information, align situation Subsequently, performance evaluated using patterns It appears so-called STIP heuristic (S for Total estimated Inventory Perishables) provides lowest cost waste levels.