Inventory control is among the most important topics in operations research because of large investments in inventory and their effect on the profitability of the firms. A systematic analysis of inventory problems began with the development of the classical EOQ formula of Ford W. Harris in 1913,...

We consider a stochastic multi-product inventory model with a ware-housing constraint with the objective of minimizing the expected long-run average cost. Using the vanishing discount approach, a dynamic programming equation and the corresponding verification result are established. The...

We propose a model where customers are classified into two groups: short lead-time customers who require the product immediately and long lead-time customers to whom the supplier may deliver either immediately or in the next cycle. Unmet orders are backlogged with associated costs. Specifically,...

This article analyzes a discrete time lost sales inventory system with partially observed demand and unobserved shrinkages which happen both before and after the demand realization. When the demand exceeds the remaining inventory, the unmet demand is lost and unobserved. This problem in general...

This entry is a brief survey of classical inventory models and their extensions in several directions such as world-driven demands, presence of forecast updates, multi-delivery modes and advanced demand information, incomplete inventory information, and decentralized inventory control in the...

We develop a new, unified approach to treating continuous-time stochastic inventory problems with both the average and discounted cost criteria. The approach involves the development of an adjusted discounted cycle cost formula, which has an appealing intuitive interpretation. We show for the...

This paper studies multiproduct inventory models with stochastic demands and a warehousing constraint. Finite horizon as well as stationary and nonstationary discounted-cost infinite-horizon problems are addressed. Existence of optimal feedback policies is established under fairly general...

In this paper, we use a Markov decision process (MDP) to model the joint inventory-promotion decision problem. The state variable of the MDP represents the demand state brought about by changing environmental factors as well as promotion decisions. The demand state in a period determines the...

This paper advances significantly the literature on the optimality of the base stock policy by generalizing the demand distribution and beginning with a completely general belief prior to be updated as demands are observed over time. As the value function depends on the belief, the functional...

This paper investigates the dynamic inventory model for the case when production in a period is restricted to a finite set of specified values. The model allows the production rate to be any value in the set {0, P, 2P, ..., mP}, where m is a nonnegative integer. It is assumed that the setup cost...