This paper considers a retailer inventory system with N first-echelon stores and a single second-echelon distribution center (DC). Customer demands at the stores are assumed to be random. When a stockout occurs, customers are willing to wait for their order to be filled with a known probability....

This paper considers a "single bottleneck system": a multistage production system where all setups except one are zero. The stage with nonzero setup is defined to be the bottleneck; it may be thought of as the critical resource whose throughput largely determines the throughput of the entire...