Estimating Reorder Points for ARMA Demand with Arbitrary Variable Lead Time

It an inventory control system, the demand over time are often assumed to be independently identically distributed (i. i. d.). However, the demands may well be correlated over time in many situations. The estimation of reorder points is not simple for correlated demands with variable lead time. In this paper, a general class of autoregressive and moving average processes is considered for modeling the demands of an inventory item. The first four moments of the lead-time demand (L) are derived and used to approximate the distribution of L. The reorder points at given service level are then estimated by the three approximation methods : normal approximation, Charlier series and Pearson system. Numerical investigation shows that the Pearson system and the Charlier series performs extremely well for various situations whereas the normal approximation show consistent underestimation and sensitive to the distribution of lead time. The same conclusion can be reached when the parameters are estimated from the sample based on the simulation study.