Heuristic policies for inventory ordering problems with long and randomly varying lead times

A model developed by Liberatore in 1977 was the first approach to incorporate random lead time and yet had a feasible solution approach for a multi-period problem. However, this approach requires significant development time for implementation on a digital computer by a technically skilled analyst. The authors’ sensitivity analysis of this model indicates that a solution of the model for every specific case may not be necessary. In fact, some heuristic policies are revealed that offer a manager a finite set of alternatives to consider with some assurance that the policy selected will be close to optimum.