ON THE EFFECT OF DEMAND RANDOMNESS ON INVENTORIES AND COSTS
成果类型:
Note
署名作者:
GERCHAK, Y; MOSSMAN, D
刊物名称:
OPERATIONS RESEARCH
ISSN/ISSBN:
0030-364X
DOI:
10.1287/opre.40.4.804
发表日期:
1992
页码:
804-807
关键词:
摘要:
We explore analytically cardinal effects of the extent of demand randomness on optimal inventory levels and the associated expected costs. To model changes in demand randomness, we make extensive use of a mean-preserving transformation commonly used in probabilistic microeconomics, as well as the notion of risk-pooling (aggregating independent demands). For the single period (news vendor) model, the order quantity and associated costs are shown to depend on the randomness parameter in a simple and highly interpretable manner. We show by a simple example that in some situations risk pooling might neither reduce inventories, nor move them closer to the mean or median demand. The managerial relevance of such analyses is discussed.