The infinite horizon non-stationary stochastic inventory problem: Near myopic policies and weak ergodicity

Abstract

In this paper we consider a periodic review dynamic inventory problem with non-stationary demands. The purpose of this paper is to show that near myopic policies are sufficiently close to optimal decisions for the infinite horizon inventory problem. In order to show this we pay attention to the fact that inventory processes with base-stock policies are weakly ergodic, and we discuss how the weak ergodicity is related to near myopic policies. Then we derive the error bounds of near myopic policies for the optimal decisions and evaluate them with a number of numerical experiments.