A note on a lot sizing heuristic for deteriorating items with time‐varying demands and shortages

In the present article, an existing heuristic procedure is applied to an inventory of deteriorating items with (i) linearly and (ii) exponentially time‐varying demands and shortages over a fixed planning horizon. In a similar problem, Hariga and Al‐Alyan allowed shortages in all cycles except in the last one (policy‐B). Here shortages are considered in each cycle and are completely backlogged (policy‐A). The successive scheduling periods over an infinite time horizon are adjusted for a finite planning horizon following different adjustment polices that are proposed in an algorithmic form. Numerical examples are taken from Hariga and Al‐Alyan to show that the replenishment policy‐A results in a lower average system cost than that of policy‐B in both types of demand patterns. It is also found that the approximate results under the policy‐A are closely associated with those of the optimal ones.