Control Policies for Inventory with Service Time

Abstract

This article introduces an additional control policy—the N-policy–into (s, S) inventory system with positive service time. Under specified interarrival and service time distributions, which are independent of each other, we obtain the necessary and sufficient condition for the system to be stable. We also obtain the optimal values of the control variables s, S, and N; it is seen that the cost function attains the minimum value at s = 0. It is also shown that the cost function is separately convex in the variables S and N. Numerical illustrations are provided. Several measures of performance of the system are evaluated.

Keywords:

• Control policies
• Inventory with service time

AMS Subject Classification:

• 62K25
• 90B35
• 90B06

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A. Krishnamoorthy and T. G. Deepak acknowledge the support from NBHM (DAE, Government of India) through research project 48/5/2003/R&D II/3269 and Vineetha acknowledges financial support from DST.