Cost-based filtering is a promising technique able to improve search performance in combinatorial optimization problems. Such a technique has already been successfully applied to stochastic inventory control problems. We focus on the class of production/inventory control problems that considers a single product and a single stocking location, given a stochastic demand with a known non-stationar...

We consider a model of a supply chain consisting of n production facilities in tandem and producing a single product class. External demand is met from the finished goods inventory maintained in front of the most downstream facility (stage 1); unsatisfied demand is backlogged. We adopt a base-stock production policy at each stage of the supply chain, according to which the facility at stage i p...

We consider the simultaneous seat-inventory control of a set of parallel flights between a common origin and destination with dynamic customer choice among the flights. We formulate the problem as an extension of the classic multiperiod, single-flight “block demand” revenue management model. The resulting Markov decision process is quite complex, owing to its multidimensional state space and th...

We consider a single-item continuous-review (r, q) inventory system with a renewal demand process and i.i.d. stochastic leadtimes. Using a stationary marked point process technique and a heavy traffic limit, we prove a previous conjecture that inventory position and inventory on-order are asymptotically independent. We also establish closed-form expressions for the optimal policy parameters and...

We examine the effectiveness of the conventional (Q, r) model in managing production-inventory systems with finite capacity, stochastic demand, and stochastic order processing times. We show that, for systems with finite production capacity, order replenishment lead times are highly sensitive to loading and order quantity. Consequently, the choice of optimal order quantity and optimal reorder p...

There is a growing consensus that a portfolio of customers with different demand lead times can lead to higher, more regular revenues and better capacity utilization. Customers with positive demand lead times place orders in advance of their needs, resulting in advance demand information. This gives rise to the problem of finding effective inventory control policies under advance demand informa...

The hybrid metaheuristics algorithms (HMHAs) have gained a considerable attention for their capability to solve difficult problems in different fields of science. This chapter introduces some applications of HMHAs in solving inventory theory problems. Three basic inventory problems, joint replenishment EOQ problem, newsboy problem, and stochastic review problem, in certain and uncertain environ...