Determination of safety stocks for cyclic schedules with stochastic demands

This paper considers the problem of scheduling the production of multiple items, each with random demand, on a single facility. We show how the variance in demand during lead time can be estimated and present a model for determination of safety stocks and order-up-to levels for a fixed cyclic sequence, both with and without idle time. For systems with idle time, we present a control model to make the decision to produce next item in sequence or idle the facility. The performance of the model is tested in a simulation study.