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Inventory modeling

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Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science
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INTRODUCTION

The acquisition, production and/or distribution of inventories are issues of concern to all organizations. With the globalization of business in recent years proper inventory management is often vital to competitive success. From a national or international perspective there are huge amounts (billions of dollars) of capital tied up in stocks. More-over, there are very large costs incurred as a result of replenishment actions, shortages (caused by inadequate stock levels), and utilization of managerial and clerical time in making and routinely implementing inventory management decisions. Thus, properly designed decision rules, based on mathematical modeling, can lead to substantial benefits. In particular, spreadsheet representations of models can dramatically increase the potential for implementation. Here are three illustrative, impressive, practical applications of inventory modeling:

  1. i)

    IBM implemented a multi-echelon inventory system for managing spare parts which...

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© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Silver, E.A. (2001). Inventory modeling . In: Gass, S.I., Harris, C.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_479

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_479

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-7827-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-0611-1

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