Abstract
In this paper we compare different policies that must meet some demand requirement in a multi-center one-period inventory system. More specifically, this paper concerns a multi-location, one-period inventory problem with linear holding costs and a probability of out-of-stock constraint at each location. Such systems are common in the public sector. Three different policies are considered: (a) A decentralized policy, (b) a centralized policy without priorities, and (c) a centralized priority policy. The superiority of policy (c) over policies (a) and (b) is discussed and demonstrated for some specific examples. It is shown that this superiority is very sensitive to the size of the system.
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Mehrez, A. A comparison of different inventory policies of the one-period multi-location inventory system. Zeitschrift für Operations Research 29, B177–B183 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01920577
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01920577