Models for integrated production-inventory systems: steady state and cost analysis
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Authors
We consider a two-echelon production-inventory system with a central supplier connected to production systems (servers) at several locations, each with a local inventory. Demand of customers arrives at each production system according to a Poisson process and is lost if the local inventory is depleted. To satisfy a customer’s demand, a server at the production system takes exactly one unit of raw material from the associated local inventory. The central supplier manufactures raw material to replenish the local inventories, which are controlled by a continuous review base stock policy. We derive stationary distributions of joint queue length and inventory processes in explicit product form. After performing a cost analysis, we find out that the global search for the vector of optimal base stock levels can be reduced to a set of independent optimisation problems. The explicit form of the stationary distribution enables us to get additional structural insights, e.g. about monotonicity properties and stability conditions. Obtaining the product form relies on some simplifying assumptions. The results are therefore compared with simulations of a more realistic system, which supports to use it as approximation.
Original language | English |
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Journal | International Journal of Production Research |
Volume | 54 |
Issue number | 20 |
Pages (from-to) | 6174-6191 |
Number of pages | 18 |
ISSN | 0020-7543 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 17.10.2016 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Keywords: inventory control, queueing networks, supply chain dynamics, Markovian analysis, separability, product form stationary distribution
- Business informatics
- inventory control, Markovian analysis, product form stationary distribution, queueing networks, separability, supply chain dynamics