We study the stochastic machine replenishment problem, which is a canonical special case of closed multiclass queuing systems in Markov decision theory. The problem models the scheduling of processor repairs in a multiprocessor system in which one repair can be made at a time and the goal is to maximize system utilization. We analyze the performance of a natural greedy index policy for this pro...

In the absence of appropriate amounts of metabolically important cofactors such as magnesium, replenishment of malnourished patients with protein and carbohydrate will exaggerate the underlying abnormality even though the primary deficiency is corrected. The malnourished patients cannot utilize the food substances provided unless they have within their cells commensurate amounts of all the nec...

It is common wisdom that the finished goods inventory increases with the number of variants stored in that inventory. However, to the best of our knowledge, this has never been verified. This paper presents research where this relationship has been analyzed both by applying theory and through analytical simulation. The result shows that this common wisdom is not always true. The number of kanba...

Vendor managed inventory replenishment is a business practice in which vendors monitor their customers’ inventories, and decide when and how much inventory should be replenished. The inventory routing problem addresses the coordination of inventory management and transportation. It needs to be solved to design a strategy that realizes the potential savings in inventory and transportation costs ...

Advance Demand Information can improve the performance of production/inventory systems with random demand considerably. However, to exploit the potential of such information, replenishment policies must be adapted to the available information. We explore the impact and the benefits of Advance Demand Information under optimal replenishment policies for two different supply chain structures, one ...