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The cost of using stationary inventory policies when demand is non-stationary

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  • Tunc, Huseyin
  • Kilic, Onur A.
  • Tarim, S. Armagan
  • Eksioglu, Burak

Abstract

Non-stationary stochastic demands are very common in industrial settings with seasonal patterns, trends, business cycles, and limited-life items. In such cases, the optimal inventory control policies are also non-stationary. However, due to high computational complexity, non-stationary inventory policies are not usually preferred in real-life applications. In this paper, we investigate the cost of using a stationary policy as an approximation to the optimal non-stationary one. Our numerical study points to two important results: (i) Using stationary policies can be very expensive depending on the magnitude of demand variability. (ii) Stationary policies may be efficient approximations to optimal non-stationary policies when demand information contains high uncertainty, setup costs are high and penalty costs are low.

Suggested Citation

  • Tunc, Huseyin & Kilic, Onur A. & Tarim, S. Armagan & Eksioglu, Burak, 2011. "The cost of using stationary inventory policies when demand is non-stationary," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 410-415, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:39:y:2011:i:4:p:410-415
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    7. Ehrenthal, J.C.F. & Honhon, D. & Van Woensel, T., 2014. "Demand seasonality in retail inventory management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 238(2), pages 527-539.
    8. Nasr, Walid W. & Elshar, Ibrahim J., 2018. "Continuous inventory control with stochastic and non-stationary Markovian demand," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 270(1), pages 198-217.
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