Zero Inventory (ZI) is a new and powerful concept to improve production efficiency. Underpinning ZI is set up reduction and this paper examines what eventuates when set up costs are cut. The folklore is that set up reduction lowers inventory and costs. We obtain results contrary to that....

Zero inventory (ZI) and the related concepts of Just in Time and Kanban are innovative and powerful means to improve production efficiency. This paper applies these concepts to a series facility production system and, in particular, identifies which facilities will never hold inventory...

Zangwill (Zangwill, W. I. 1987. From EOQ towards ZI. Management Sci. 33 1209--1223.) has constructed an example which purports to show that reducing set up costs can increase total cost. We show that this happened as a result of restricting the policies to be of a "greedy" nature. The expected...