• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.21 no.48
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• pp.37-52
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• 1998

In many distribution systems important cost reductions and/or service improvements may be achieved by adopting an efficient inventory policy and proper selection of facilities. These efficiency improvements and service enhancements clearly require an integrated approach towards various logistical planning functions. The areas of inventory control and transportation planning need to be closely coordinated. The purpose of this paper is to construct an integrated model that can minimize the total cost of the transportation and inventory systems between multiple origin and destination points, where in origin point i has the supply of commodities and in destination point j requires the commodities. In this case, demands of the destination points are assumed random variables which have a known probability distribution. Using the lot-size reorder-point policy and the safety stock level that minimize total cost we find optimal distribution centers which transport the commodities to the destination points and suggest an optimal inventory policy to the selected distribution center. We also show if a demand greater than one unit will occur at a particular time, we describe the approximate optional replenishment policy from computational results of this lot-size reorder-point policy. This model is formulated as a 0-1 nonlinear integer programming problem. To solve the problem, this paper proposes heuristic computational procedures and a computer program with UNIX C language. In the usefulness review, we show the meaning and validity of the proposed model and exhibit the results of a comparison between our approach and the traditional approach, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.312-321
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• 2007

We address a disposal issue of returned products in a product recovery system where a single product is stocked in order to meet a demand from customers who may return products after usage. Product returns occur randomly and can be accepted for remanufacturing or disposed of depending on the state of the system. We examine the structure of the optimal disposal policy for returned product that utilizes the information of the inventory of both serviceable and remanufacturable products. Numerical study indicates that it can be characterized by a monotonic threshold type of the curve. A disposal is allowed only when the remanufacturable inventory level exceeds a threshold which is the function of the inventory level of serviceable product and it is decreasing as the serviceable inventory level increases. Sensitivity analysis also indicates that the optimal disposal policy and the optimal profit have monotonic properties with respect to system parameters.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2008

The Kanban system in Just-In-Time (JIT) production is very effective in reducing the inventories when consumption rate of the final product is relatively stable. When large fluctuations exist in the consumption rate, a new production ordering policy in which the production order quantity is determined by smoothing the demands exponentially is more suitable. This new ordering policy has not been investigated sufficiently. In this research, a multi-stage production and inventory system with stock points for materials and finished items located at each stage is considered. Approximations of average inventories at each stage in the system are derived theoretically. Numerical simulations are carried out to assess the accuracy of approximations and to evaluate the effectiveness of the new ordering policy as compared with the Kanban system. As a result, it is shown that the new ordering policy can achieve significantly lower inventory costs than the original Kanban system. The new ordering policy thus emerges as a key concept for an effective supply chain management.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.72-79
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• 2009

The ultimate goal of inventory management is to decide the timing and the quantity of ordering in response to uncertain demands. Recently, some researchers have focused upon an impact of distortions in the information, e.g., customer order cancellation, on an economical inventory policy. The customer order cancellation is considered a kind of distortions in demands, because a demand that is eventually cancelled is equivalent to a phony demand. Also, there are some additional distortions in the inventory information. For instance, the procurement of suppliers may include some nonconforming items as a result of imperfect production and inspection by the suppliers, and/or damage in transit. The nonconforming item should be considered a kind of distortions in the inventory information, because the nonconforming item is equivalent to a phony stock. In this article, we consider an inventory model under the situation that customers can cancel their orders and the procurement of suppliers may include some nonconforming items. Then, we introduce the customer order reservation into the inventory model for the purpose of avoiding the costly backlogs, because the customer order reservation gives retailers a period to fulfill customer's requests. We formulate a periodic review (s, S) inventory model and investigate the economical operation under the situation mentioned above. Further, through the sensitivity analysis, we show the impact of these distortions and the effect of the customer order reservation on the inventory policy.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.21 no.1 s.23
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• pp.195-206
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• 1988

Two major issues of the blood bank management are quality assurance and inventory control. Recently, in Korea blood donation has gained popularity increasingly to allow considerable improvement of the quality assurance with respect to blood collection, transportation, storage, component preparation skills and hematological tests. Nevertheless the inventory control, the other issue of blood bank management, has been neglected so far. For the supply of blood by donation barely meets the demand, the blood bank policy on the inventory control has been 'the more the better.' The shortage itself by no means unnecessitate inventory control. In fact, in spite of shortage, no small amount of blood is outdated. The efficient blood inventory control makes it possible to economize the blood usage in the practice of state-of-the-art medical care. For the efficient blood inventory control in Korean hospitals, this tudy is to develop formulae forecasting the standard blood inventory level and suggest a set of policies improving the blood inventory control. For this study informations of $A^+$ whole bloods and packed cells inventory control were collected from a University Hospital and the Central Blood Bank of the Korean Red Cross. Using this informations, 1,461 daily blood inventory records were formulated.48 varieties of blood inventory control environment were identified on the basis of selected combinations of 4 inventory control variables-crossmatch, transfusion, inhospital donation and age of bloods from external supply. In order to decide the optimal blood inventory level for each environment, simulation models were designed to calculate the measures of performance of each environment. After the decision of 48 optimal blood inventory levels, stepwise multiple regression analysis was started where the independent variables were 4 inventory control variables and the dependent variable was optimal inventory level of each environment. Finally the standard blood inventory level decision rule was developed using the backward elimination procedure to select the best regression equation. And the effective alternatives of the issuing policy and crossmatch release period were suggested according to the measures of performance under the condition of the standard blood inventory level. The results of this study' were as follows ; 1. The formulae to calculate the standard blood inventory level($S^*$)was $S^*=2.8617X(d)^{0.9342}$ where d is the mean daily crossmatch(demand) for a blood type. 2. The measures of performace - outdate rate, average period of storage, mean age of transfused bloods, and mean daily available inventory level - were improved after maintenance of the standard inventory level in comparison with the present system. 3. Issuing policy of First In-First Out(FIFO) decreased the outdate rate, while Last In-First Out(LIFO) decreased the mean age of transfused bloods. The decrease of the crossmatch release period reduced the outdate rate and the mean age of transfused bloods.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2015

In this paper, we consider multi-item inventory management. When managing a multi-item inventory, we coordinate replenishment orders of items supplied by the same supplier. The associated problem is called the joint replenishment problem (JRP). One often-used approach to the JRP is to apply a can-order policy. Under a can-order policy, some items are re-ordered when their inventory level drops to or below their re-order level, and any other item with an inventory level at or below its can-order level can be included in this order. In the present paper, we propose a method for finding the optimal parameter of a can-order policy, the can-order level, for each item in a lost-sales model. The main objectives in our model are minimizing the number of ordering, inventory, and shortage (i.e., lost-sales) respectively, compared with the conventional JRP, in which the objective is to minimize total cost. In order to solve this multi-objective optimization problem, we apply a genetic algorithm. In a numerical experiment using actual shipment data, we simulate the proposed model and compare the results with those of other methods.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.145-157
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• 2005

There are a lot of raw materials, work-in-processes and finished goods in manufacturing industry. Here, the less stock of materials and work-in-processes manufacturing industry has, the worse the rate of the production is. Inversely, the more manufacturing industry has, the more expensive the cost to support them is. Thus, it is important for us to balance them efficiently. In general, inventory problems are to decide appropriate times to produce goods and to determine appropriate quantities of goods. Therefore, inventory problems require as more useful information as possible. For example, there are demand, lead time, ordering point and so on. In this paper, we deal with an optimal ordering policy on both way substitutable two-commodity inventory control system. That is, there is a problem of how to allocate the produced two kinds of goods in a factory to m areas so as to minimize the total expected inventory cost. The demand of each area is probabilistic, and we adopt the exponential distribution as a probability density function of demand. Moreover, we provide numerical examples of the problem.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.81-86
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• 2014

In this paper, a jointly optimal group replacement and spare provisioning policy is presented. Most maintenance policies assume that the spare inventory is always available, but in practice the maintenance schedule is affected by the availability of spare inventory. We present a maintenance-inventory model which jointly optimizes the group replacement interval and spare ordering quantity. Group replacement policy is used when a group of units are put in operation simultaneously. The operating fleet is replaced altogether at a predetermined number of units are failed. A sufficient level of spare inventory is carried to perform a number of group replacement. A cost rate expression which considers the group maintenance cost and inventory holding cost is derived and a heuristic method for searching the optimum value of decision variables is suggested. Numerical examples demonstrate the analytical results and the performance of the presented model.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 1986

In this paper, we find optimal policy for the (Q, r) inventory model under the lead time uncertainty. The (Q, r) inventory model is such that the fixed order quantity Q is placed whenever the level of on hand stock reaches the reorder point r. We first develop the single level inventory model as the basis for the analysis multi-level distribution systems. The functional problem is to determine when and how much to order in order to minimize the expected total cost per unit time, which includes the set up, inventory holding and inventory shortage cost. The model, then, is extended to the multi-level distribution system consisting of the factory, warehouses and retailers. In this case, we also find an optimal policy which minimizes the total cost of the contralized multi-level distribution system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.8-13
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• 2003

This paper considers a continuous-review two-echelon inventory control problem with one-to-one replenishment policy incorporated and with lost sales allowed where demand arrives In a stationary Poisson process The problem Is formulated using METRIC-approximation in a combined approach of pricing and (S-1.S) Inventory policy, for which an iterative solution algorithm is derived with respect to the corresponding one-warehouse multi-retailor supply chain. Specifically, decisions on retail pricing and warehouse inventory policies are made in integration to maximize total profit in the supply chain. The objective function of the model consists of sub-functions of revenue and cost (holding cost and penalty cost). To test the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm, numerical experiments are performed The computational results show that the proposed algorithm is efficient and derives quite good decisions