Title
A continuous review replenishment-disposal policy for an inventory system with autonomous supply and fixed disposal costs
Abstract
In this study, we analyze an inventory system facing stochastic external demands and an autonomous supply (independent return flow) in the presence of fixed disposal costs and positive lead times under a continuous review replenishment–disposal policy. We derive the analytical expressions of the operating characteristics of the system; and, construct the objective function to minimize the total expected costs of ordering, holding, purchasing and disposal per unit time subject to a fill rate constraint. An extensive numerical analysis is conducted to study the sensitivity of the policy parameters and the benefit of employing a policy which allows for disposal of excess stock in this setting. We model the net demand process as the superposition of normally distributed external demand and inflows, which is expressed as a Brownian motion process. Our findings indicate that the disposal option results in considerable savings even (i) in the presence of non-zero fixed disposal costs, (ii) large actual demand rates with high return ratios (resulting in small net demands) and (iii) for moderate return ratios with high demand variability.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1016/j.ejor.2007.04.055
European Journal of Operational Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
Inventory control,Reusables,Disposal,Brownian motion,Autonomous supply
Return flow,Operations research,Fixed cost,Inventory control,Lead time,Autonomous system (mathematics),Purchasing,Inventory system,Operations management,Mathematics,Rate of return
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
190
2
0377-2217
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.44
3
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Çerag Pinçe171.25
Ülkü Gürler2807.55
Emre Berk3566.15