Article ID: | iaor20033110 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 51 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 292 |
End Page Number: | 308 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2003 |
Journal: | Operations Research |
Authors: | Yao David D., Song Jing-Sheng, Lu Yingdong |
Keywords: | inventory, queues: applications |
We study an assemble-to-order system with stochastic leadtimes for component replenishment. There are multiple product types, of which orders arrive at the system following batch Poisson processes. Base-stock policies are used to control component inventories. We analyze the system as a set of queues driven by a common, multiclass batch Poisson input, and derive the joint queue-length distribution. The result leads to simple, closed-form expressions of the first two moments, in particular the covariances, which capture the dependence structure of the system. Based on the joint distribution and the moments, we derive easy-to-compute approximations and bounds for the order fulfillment performance measures. We also examine the impact of demand and leadtime variability and investigate the value of advanced demand information.