Evaluation of base-stock policies in multiechelon inventory systems with State-Department demands. Part I: State independent policies

This article analyzes a model of a multiechelon inventory system. The exogenous demands form Markov-modulated Poisson processes. That is, the demand rates are functions of an underlying Markov chain. Each location follows a base-stock policy which is independent of the state of the underlying Markov chain. The authors employ the exogenous transit mechanism introduced by Zipkin, and Svoronos and Zipkin. The transit times between locations have phase-type distributions. An exact procedure to compute steady-state performance measures is presented.