Article ID: | iaor20013750 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 91 |
Start Page Number: | 123 |
End Page Number: | 136 |
Publication Date: | Aug 1999 |
Journal: | Annals of Operations Research |
Authors: | Parlar Mahmut, zekici Sleyman |
Keywords: | programming: dynamic |
We consider infinite-horizon periodic-review inventory models with unreliable suppliers where the demand, supply and cost parameters change with respect to a randomly changing environment. Although our analysis will be in the context of an inventory model, it is also appropriate for production systems with unreliable machines where planning is done on a periodic basis. It is assumed that the environmental process follows a Markov chain. The stock-flow equations of the inventory system subject to environmental fluctuations is represented using a two-dimensional stochastic process. We show that an environment-dependent order-up-to level (i.e., base-stock) policy is optimal when the order cost is linear in order quantity. When there is also a fixed cost of ordering, we show that a two-parameter environment-dependent (