A Systematic Approach to the Purchase Dependence

Abstract

Under the situation which customer orders are cancelled unless all products in the order are delivered all at once, this paper concentrates on the purchase dependent demands and explores the systematic approach to implant the purchase dependence into the multi-product inventory model. First, by acknowledging that it is a challenging task to formulate a suitable inventory model for the purchase dependence, we derive the optimal solution condition using an EOQ model and extend the optimal solution condition to periodic review models. Then, through the comparison simulation of four inventory policies regarding several degrees of purchase dependence, we demonstrate that the inventory models which consider the purchase dependence generate less total cost than the inventory models which ignore the purchase dependence. In general, the inventory models which consider the purchase dependence reduce the loss of sales by maintaining more inventories, which results in reducing the total cost. Consequently, the simulation result supports the effectiveness of this paper’s approach. In addition, this paper uses the individual order period and joint order period obtained from the EOQ model for the multi-product inventory model. Through the in-depth analysis of comparing the two models, we observe that the model of using the joint order period produces less total cost when the degree of purchase dependence is high, but the model of using the individual order period produces less total cost when the degree of purchase dependence is low.