Article ID: | iaor200971 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 179 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 424 |
End Page Number: | 443 |
Publication Date: | Jun 2007 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Karmarkar Uday S., Rajaram Kumar, Vandaele Nico, Nieuwenhuyse Inneke Van |
Keywords: | queues: applications |
This paper studies the impact of management policies, such as product allocation and campaign sizing, on the required size of the finished goods inventories in a multi-product multi-reactor batch process. Demand, setup and batch processing times for these products are assumed to be stochastic, and the inventory buffer for every product type needs to be such that target customer service levels are met. To perform this analysis, we develop a queueing model that allows us to explicitly estimate service levels as a function of the buffer size, and the allocation/campaign sizing policies.