Some Problems in Inventory Management: Some Inventory Models: Optimality, Estimation, Robustness

Inventory management is maintenance of physical stock of goods to meet future demands for efficient functioning of a management system. The present work considers inventory control problems for the following situations: (a) The case of an item with an acceptable substitute for some of the customers, when the original is out of stock and when (b) the two items are mutually substitutable. (c) Stocking cum pricing system, considering the effect of consumer behavior subject to pricing. (d) The case of single discount offers. (e) The case of randomly fluctuating price as seen in open markets. Dynamic set up with fluctuating procurement cost and varying demand densities over different periods is studied. (f) Estimation from of censored demand or sales data is studied for the newsboy problem.(g) The robustness of the newsboy model and the periodic review inventory model are examined for modelling error that is when the demand distribution is incorrectly estimated.