This paper compares installation and echelon stock policies for multilevel inventory control. The major results are for serial and assembly systems. For (Q, r)-rules, echelon stock policies are, in general, superior to installation stock policies. A Kanban-policy is identified as a restricted...

The classical dynamic lot size problem without backlogging is in practice usually solved with the aid of various heuristics. Most heuristics are sequential techniques, i.e. the future demand is considered period for period, and a decision whether to have a set-up or not in a certain period is...

A continuous review serial production/distribution system with discrete compound Poisson demand for the end product is considered. Unmet demand is back-ordered. Production/transportation times are constant. All deliveries from one stage to the next must be multiples of given batch sizes. We...

This paper deals with the classical dynamic lot size problem without backlogging and capacity limitation. We derive worst case performance bounds for a class of lot sizing heuristics. When the considered methods are applied a decision whether to have a set-up or not in a certain period is taken...

In a recent paper, Cetinkaya and Lee (2000) model integrated inventory control and shipment scheduling in connection with vendor-managed inventory (VMI). The model is optimized by an approximate technique. This note provides a simple procedure for exact optimization, and illustrates that the...

In inventory systems with several bases that support different geographical regions, it is quite common to allow emergency lateral transshipments between the bases. This may be advantageous if neighbouring bases are at shorter distances than the central depot or the external supplier. This paper...

This paper deals with a single--echelon inventory system consisting of a number of parallel local warehouses facing compound Poisson demand. There are standard holding and backorder costs as well as ordering costs at all warehouses. Normally, the warehouses replenish from an outside supplier....

This note gives an improved bound (\root 5 - 2)/2 \approx 0.1180 for the relative cost increase when using the deterministic EOQ formula as a heuristic solution when demands are stochastic. We also discuss under what circumstances this bound is tight.