Comparative Analysis of Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Goods Classification

In this paper, different methods of inventory classification are compared. ABC classical methodology discriminates the articles to be classified according to two variables: unitary cost and yearly demand. This paper proposes different methodologies that broaden the analysis over more attributes: Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks, Tabu Search and several techniques included the WEKA program developed by the University of Waikato. To check the reliability of the models, the results are compared to the heuristic classification that an expert made in a set of 189 pharmaceutical products considering five input attributes. In addition, an Inventory Generator Program has been used to create five inventories that have been classified by the different algorithms, so that the results obtained by the algorithms could be compared.