Strategic Safety Stocks in Supply Chains with Evolving Forecasts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Schoenmeyr, Tor; Graves, Stephen C.
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: M&SOM-MANUFACTURING & SERVICE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1523-4614
• DOI: 10.1287/msom.1080.0245
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 657-673
• 关键词: evolving forecast; safety stock; supply chain; MRP; guaranteed service

摘要

We examine the placement of safety stocks in a supply chain for which we have an evolving demand forecast. Under assumptions about the forecasts, the demand process, and the supply chain structure, we show that safety-stock placement for such systems is effectively equivalent to the corresponding well-studied problem for systems with stationary demand bounds and base-stock policies. Hence, we can use existing algorithms to find the optimal safety stocks. We use a case study with real data to demonstrate that there are significant benefits from the inclusion of the forecast process when determining the optimal safety stocks. We also conduct a computational experiment to explore how the placement and size of the safety stocks depend on the nature of the forecast evolution process.