• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.116-124
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• 2012

This paper concerns a joint replenishment problem for a single buyer who sells multiple types of items to end-customers. The buyer periodically replenishes the inventory of each item to a preset order-up-to-level to satisfy the end customers' demands, which may be non-stationary. A joint replenishment policy characterized by variable order-up-to-levels is proposed for the buyer who wishes to minimize the expected cost of operating the retail system. The proposed policy starts each period by calculating the expected cost of ordering and not ordering action based on the information of the current inventory position and forecasted demand for the upcoming period. It then takes advantage of an integer programming model to get a cost effective joint replenishment plan. Computer experiment was performed to test efficiency of the proposed policy. When compared with the most efficient policy currently available, our policy showed a considerable cost savings especially for the problems having non-stationary demands.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Industrial Systems Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.235-240
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• 2006

The existing inventory managements bear a relation to forecasting or assumptions. So these methods become more complicated and more expensive systems as time goes. This paper developed a practical inventory system which is called DCC(demand control chart). DCC does not 'forecast' but 'control' the trend of demand without assumptions. According to the trend of sales, DCC adjusts an order quantity considering the capacity of shelf in a store. Specially, DCC is a useful method under FRID system. Besides, this paper introduces EPFR(Every Period Full Replenishment) policy for reducing stocks.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.441-445
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• 2004

In this paper, we deal with an inventory model of a multi-stage, serial supply chain system where a single product type and nonstationary customer demand pattern are considered. The retailer and suppliers place their orders according to an echelon-stock based replenishment control policy. We assume that the suppliers can access online information on the demand history and use this information when making their replenishment decisions. Using a reinforcement learning technique, the inventory control parameters are designed to adaptively change as the customer demand pattern is altered, in order to maintain a given target service level. Through a simulation based experiment, we verified that our approach is good for maintaining the target service level.

• IE interfaces
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.119-134
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• 1997

The management of blood inventory is very important within the medical care system. The efficient management of blood supplies and demands for transfusions is of great economic and social importance to both hospitals and patients. For any blood type, there is a complex interaction among the optimal inventory level, daily demand level, daily supply level, transfusion to crossmatch ratio, crossmatch release period, issuing policy and the age of arriving units that determine the shortage and outdate rate. In this paper, we develop an efficient decision rule for blood inventory management in a hospital blood bank which can support efficient hospital blood inventory management using simulation. The primary use of the efficient decision rule will be to establish minimum cost function which consists of inventory levels, period in inventory, outdate and shortage rate for whole blood and various component inventories for a hospital blood bank or a transfusion service. If the administrator compute the mean daily demand for each blood type, the mean daily supply for each blood type, the length of the crossmatch release period and the average transfusion to crossmatch ratio, then it is possible to apply the efficient decision rule to compute the optimal inventory level, inventory period, outdate and shortage rate. This rule can also be used as a decision support system that allows the blood bank administrator to do sensitivity analysis related to controllable blood inventory parameters.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2011

This paper presents a new method that can solve the integrated problem of combined location routing and inventory problem (CLRIP) efficiently. The CLRIP is used to establish facilities from several candidate depots, to find the optimal set of vehicle routes, and to determine the inventory policy in order to minimize the total system cost. We propose a mathematical model for the CLRIP with budget constrained. Because this model is a nonpolynomial (NP) problem, we propose a endosymbiotic evolutionary algorithm (EEA) which is a kind of symbiotic evolutionary algorithm (SEA). The heuristic method is used to obtaining the initial solutions for the EEA. The experimental results show that EEA perform very well compared to the existing heuristic methods with considering inventory control decisions.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.129-134
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• 2003

In this paper, we determine optimal reduction in the lead time and setup cost for some stochastic inventory models. And we propose more general model that allow the backorder rate as a control variable. We first assume that the lead time demand follows a normal distribution. And we assume that the backorder rate is dependent on the length of lead time through the amount of shortages. The stochastic models analyzed in this paper are the classical continuous and periodic review policy models with a mixture of backorders and lost sales. For each of these models, we provide a sufficient conditions for the uniqueness of the optimal operating policy. We also develop algorithms for solving these models and provide illustrative numerical examples.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.31-40
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• 2003

This paper studies an optimal policy for a certain class of (s, S) inventory control systems, where the demands are characterized by the renewal arrival process. To minimize the average cost over a simulation period, we apply a stochastic optimization algorithm which uses the gradients of parameters, s and S. We obtain the gradients of objective function with respect to ordering amount S and reorder point s via a combined perturbation method. This method uses the infinitesimal perturbation analysis and the smoothed perturbation analysis alternatively according to occurrences of ordering event changes. The optimal estimates of s and S from our simulation results are quite accurate. We consider that this may be due to the estimated gradients of little noise from the regenerative system simulation, and their effect on search procedure when we apply the stochastic optimization algorithm. The directions for future study stemming from this research pertain to extension to the more general inventory system with regard to demand distribution, backlogging policy, lead time, and inter-arrival times of demands. Another direction involves the efficiency of stochastic optimization algorithm related to searching procedure for an improving point of (s, S).

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.93-104
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• 2007

We consider a supply chain where products are shipped to warehouse from manufacturing system to customers. Products are supplied from either in-house regular manufacturing or the secondary source such as subcontractor. The inventory in warehouse is controlled by base-stock policy, that is, whenever a demand arrives from customer, an order is released to the manufacturing system. Unsatisfied demand is backlogged. The manufacturing system is modeled as M/M/s+1/c queueing system, and the orders exceeding the given limit care blocked and lost. The steady state distribution of the outstanding orders and the throughput of the manufacturing system are functions of the level of engagement In the secondary source. There is a profit obtained from throughput and cost not only due to the engagement of the secondary source in the manufacturing system but also inventory positions. We want to maximize the total production profit minus the total cost of the production system by simultaneously determining the optimal level of engagement of the secondary source and the optimal base-stock level of the inventory. We develop two algorithms : one without guarantee of the optimal solution but with the small number of computations, the other optimal but with more computations.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2003

In this paper, we focus an optimal policy focus optimal class of (s, S) inventory control systems. To this end, we use the perturbation analysis and apply a stochastic optimization algorithm to minimize the average cost over a period. We obtain the gradients of objective function with respect to ordering amount S and reorder point s via a combined perturbation method. This method uses the infinitesimal perturbation analysis and the smoothed perturbation analysis alternatively according to occurrences of ordering event changes. Our simulation results indicate that the optimal estimates of s and S obtained from a stochastic optimization algorithm are quite accurate. We consider that this may be due to the estimated gradients of little noise from the regenerative system simulation, and their effect on search procedure when we apply the stochastic optimization algorithm. The directions for future study stemming from this research pertain to extension to the more general inventory system with regard to demand distribution, backlogging policy, lead time, and review period. Another directions involves the efficiency of stochastic optimization algorithm related to searching procedure for an improving point of (s, S).

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.426-426
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• 1999

;There are many sources of uncertainty in a typical production and inventory system. There is uncertainty as to how many items customers will demand during the next day, week, month, or year. There is uncertainty about delivery times of the product. Uncertainty exacts a toll from management in a variety of ways. A spurt in a demand or a delay in production may lead to stockouts, with the potential for lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction. Firms typically hold inventory to provide protection against uncertainty. A cushion of inventory on hand allows management to face unexpected demands or delays in delivery with a reduced chance of incurring a stockout. The proposed strategies are used for the design of a probabilistic inventory system. In the traditional approach to the design of an inventory system, the goal is to find the best setting of various inventory control policy parameters such as the re-order level, review period, order quantity, etc. which would minimize the total inventory cost. The goals of the analysis need to be defined, so that robustness becomes an important design criterion. Moreover, one has to conceptualize and identify appropriate noise variables. There are two main goals for the inventory policy design. One is to minimize the average inventory cost and the stockouts. The other is to the variability for the average inventory cost and the stockouts The total average inventory cost is the sum of three components: the ordering cost, the holding cost, and the shortage costs. The shortage costs include the cost of the lost sales, cost of loss of goodwill, cost of customer dissatisfaction, etc. The noise factors for this design problem are identified to be: the mean demand rate and the mean lead time. Both the demand and the lead time are assumed to be normal random variables. Thus robustness for this inventory system is interpreted as insensitivity of the average inventory cost and the stockout to uncontrollable fluctuations in the mean demand rate and mean lead time. To make this inventory system for robustness, the concept of utility theory will be used. Utility theory is an analytical method for making a decision concerning an action to take, given a set of multiple criteria upon which the decision is to be based. Utility theory is appropriate for design having different scale such as demand rate and lead time since utility theory represents different scale across decision making attributes with zero to one ranks, higher preference modeled with a higher rank. Using utility theory, three design strategies, such as distance strategy, response strategy, and priority-based strategy. for the robust inventory system will be developed.loped.