Continuous Review Perishable Inventory Models

Abstract

Continuous review means that the state of the inventory system is known at all times, as opposed to periodic review where the state of the system is known only at discrete points in time labeled periods. Surprisingly, very little is known about optimal ordering policies for fixed life perishables under continuous review. The difficulty is that when an order lead time is present, aging is applied only to the units on hand, and not to the units on order. Furthermore, since units may be ordered at any point in time, there is no limit to the number of different orders that comprise the on-hand inventory at any point in time. Hence, the vector describing the on-hand inventory of each age level has an unlimited number of dimensions.KeywordsLead TimeOptimal PolicyInventory LevelDemand ProcessContinuous ReviewThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.