• Korean Management Science Review
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.17-31
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of identifying and considering 'purchase dependence' when purchase of an item is dependent on availability of other items demanded in the same order. This paper is the first study to develop an inventory model for purchase-dependent inventory systems. Through simulation experiments, we demonstrate that the developed inventory model incurs less inventory operations cost than other inventory models that ignore purchase dependence. For empirical validation of the developed inventory model, the actual inventory data at the Hyundai Engine Europe Service Center is used. We explain the process of identifying purchase dependencies among items through a data mining technique. The empirical study results in similar results to the simulation experiment, demonstrating that the developed inventory model is applicable to real situations.