In this paper we consider a periodic review order-up-to-level (or base stock) inventory control system under normally distributed demand. For such circumstances an expression for the exact fill rate (fraction of demand satisfied without backordering) has been available in the literature but has not been widely known, let alone used by practitioners. In this paper we redevelop the expression and...

The primary consequence of just-in-time (JIT) production is reduction of inventory. The associated benefit is (a) improved cashflow due to less financial resource tied up in inventory, and (b) less storage space required hence more productive plant area. Coupled with lean production and total quality management (TQM), it may also be possible to (c) improve worker productivity, (d) improve produ...

The paper describes a procedure for optimising the performance of an industrially designed inventory control system. This has the three classic control policies utilising sales, inventory and pipeline information to set the order rate so as to achieve a desired balance between capacity, demand and minimum associated stock level. A "rst step in optimisation is the selection of appropriate `bench...

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) are those equipped with two or more energy sources, usually, a fuel tank with its associated internal combustion engine (ICE) and an electrical storage system (ESS), typically a bank of batteries. In order to efficiently operate the system it is necessary to determine the instantaneous power split between the two sources when the vehicle performs a predetermined d...

In this paper, we consider a multi-objective control problem for stochastic systems that seeks to minimize a cost of interest while ensuring safety. We introduce a novel measure of safety risk using the conditional value-at-risk and a set distance to formulate a safety risk-constrained optimal control problem. Our reformulation method using an extremal representation of the safety risk measure ...

The optimal control of inventory in supply chains plays a key role in the competiveness of a corporation. The inventory cost can account for half of company’s logistics cost. The classical inventory models, e.g., newsvendor and EOQ models, assume either a single or infinite planning periods. However, these models may not be applied to perishable products which usually have a certain shelf life....

We consider a multi-stage inventory control problem with nonstationary customer demand under a customer service-level constraint. We propose a multi-agent based model for distributed inventory control systems. In this model, the agent at the first stage is called a retail agent and those at the remaining stages are called supply agents. The retail agent makes an effort to satisfy a target custo...

The modern business environment is highly unpredictable. An anticipation approach in a real case study is presented to cope with such instability and minimize the total inventory cost without stock-outs occurring and inventory capacity being exceeded. The anticipation concept is performed using simulation models supported by inventory control algorithms on a selected sample of representative it...

This paper is concerned with near-optimal control of manufacturing systems consisting of two unreliable machines in tandem and having the objective of minimizing the total discounted cost of inventories/shortages over an innnite horizon. Asymptotic optimal feedback controls are constructed with respect to the rate of machine breakdown/repair as compared to the given discount rate. Performance o...

Inventory control is important in supply chain management. A great deal of research efforts have been devoted to it over a few decades. Previous researches always assume that the lead time is an exogenously parameter, and the unmet demand is backordered. However, these assumptions may not suit to the real environment. In this paper, a mathematical model regarding inventory control is set up for...