Inventory Control

Book excerpt: This third edition, which has been fully updated and now includes improved and extended explanations, is suitable as a core textbook as well as a source book for industry practitioners. It covers traditional approaches for forecasting, lot sizing, determination of safety stocks and reorder points, KANBAN policies and Material Requirements Planning. It also includes recent advances in inventory theory, for example, new techniques for multi-echelon inventory systems and Roundy's 98 percent approximation. The book also considers methods for coordinated replenishments of different items, and various practical issues in connection with industrial implementation. Other topics covered in Inventory Control include: alternative forecasting techniques, material on different stochastic demand processes and how they can be fitted to empirical data, generalized treatment of single-echelon periodic review systems, capacity constrained lot sizing, short sections on lateral transshipments and on remanufacturing, coordination and contracts. As noted, the explanations have been improved throughout the book and the text also includes problems, with solutions in an appendix.