Approximating general multi-echelon inventory systems by Poisson models

The authors consider a continuous review two-level inventory system with a central warehouse and a number of retailers. The demand processes at the retailers are different compound Poisson processes. The authors present and evaluate an approximate optimization technique, where the real demand is replaced by ‘equivalent’ Poisson demand such that the ratio between mean and standard deviation is the same as for the real distribution. The solution of the Poisson model is then scaled back to the original problem.