In the inventory model, people usually assume that the inter-demand times are independent and identically distributed, but that may not be true in reality. This limitation motivated us to seek greater understanding of an important class of inventory models with dependent demand. In this paper we analyze an ( ) S s, continuous review perishable inventory system with a Markovian renewal demand pr...

This paper reviews inventory models with multiple supply options and discusses their contribution to supply chain management. After discussing strategic aspects of supplier competition and the role of operational flexibility in global sourcing, inventory models which use several suppliers in order to avoid or reduce the effects of shortage situations are outlined. Further, related inventory pro...

A two-stage inventory system is considered where Poisson demand occurs at Stage 1, and Stage 1 replenishes its inventory from Stage 2, which in turn orders from an outside supplier with unlimited stock. Each shipment, either to Stage 2 or to Stage 1, incurs a fixed setup cost. Under the assumption that the supply leadtime at Stage 2 is zero, we characterize a simple heuristic policy whose long-...

The effect of imperfect production processes on lot sizing decisions received a lot of attention in the literature. These efforts have been almost confined to single stage production systems. The issue of imperfect production processes has not been adequately addressed in the context of multistage production/inventory systems. In this paper, we propose a two-stage production inventory model tha...

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 ...

Vendor managed resupply is an emerging trend in logistics and refers to a situation in which a supplier manages the inventory replenishment of its customers. Vendors save on distribution cost by being able to better coordinate deliveries to different customers, and customers do not have to dedicate resources to inventory management anymore. We present and discuss the inventory routing problem. ...

T his paper studies echelon stock (R, nQ) policies in serial production/inventory systems with stochastic demand. We provide a recursive procedure to compute the steady state echelon inventory levels of the systems, which can be used to evaluate the long-run average holding and backorder costs as well as other performance measures. The procedure is based upon an observation of a relationship be...

Climate change adaptation presents a challenge to current top-down governance structures, including the tension between provision of public goods and actions required by diverse stakeholders, including private actors. Alternative governance approaches that facilitate participation and learning across scales are gaining attention for their ability to bring together diverse actors across sectors ...

Advance demand information, when used effectively, improves the performance of production/inventory systems. In this paper, we investigate the value of advance demand information in production/inventory systems. For a single-stage make-to-stock queue, we assess the value of using advance demand information under a variety of assumptions on the cost of obtaining advance demand information, and t...

Stability is a fundamental design property of inventory systems. However, the often exploited linearity assumptions in the current literature create a major gap between theory and practice. In this paper the stability of a constrained production and inventory system with a Forbidden Returns constraint (that is, a non-negative order rate) is studied via a piecewise linear model, an eigenvalue an...