Performance evaluation and design of base stock systems

In this paper, we are interested in the design of base stock systems. To design a system, we need an accurate and rapid method to evaluate the performance of the system. We present two methods of the literature which allow the analysis of base stock systems composed of stages in series, each stage containing one exponential station. We show the equivalence between the two methods, which enables us to focus on only one of them. We propose some extensions of this method in order to study more complex base stock systems. Then, we design several examples of base stock systems. Through these examples, we want to show the usefulness of such a method for finding and analyzing the optimal behavior of a system as a function of its topology, the storage cost of products, the service time distribution of stations, etc.