Perishable inventory systems with impatient demands

An inventory system for perishable commodities (PIS) with finite shelf size and finite waiting room for demands is studied; the maximum shelf life and the maximum waiting time of a demand are assumed to be either constant or exponentially distributed, and the arrival rates for items and for demands are state-dependent. We determine the stationary distribution of the system and derive various kinds of cost functionals that are useful to evaluate the efficiency of the PIS. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1999