Course IMSC: Inventory Management in Supply Chains 

Course description:
We discuss for two types of supply chains:
1. Supply chains for regular goods,
2. Spare parts supply chains.

Supply chains for regular goods consist of production (of components), assembly and distribution stages. We focus on the evaluation and optimization of (s,S) inventory control policies for a single item single stocking point with order and product fill rates, both under normal or gamma distributed demand as well as Poisson demand processes. Next we discuss coordinated ordering (joint replenishment) of multiple items and customer differentiation.

Spare parts supply chains consist of central depots, local warehouses and repair shops. Demands for spare parts stem from corrective and planned maintenance operations. We focus on chains that provide spare parts for advanced capital goods. Service measures are in terms of system availabilities, and this leads to multi-item, multi-echelon inventory planning problems for the spare parts. We discuss various multi-item inventory models which are relevant to support real-life planning problems.

Prerequisites:
- Basic probability theory
- Basic knowledge of Markov processes and queueing theory (M|M|1, M|G|∞, M|G|c|c queue)

Literature:
- Handouts will be provided during the course
- Some chapters from Axsater, S. “Inventory control”, Springer-Verlag.

Examination:
Two sets of homework exercises.

Address of the lecturers:
Prof.dr.ir. R. Dekker
Econometric Institute, Faculty of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam.
Phone: 010 - 40 81274.
E-mail: rdekker@ese.eur.nl

Prof.dr.ir. G.J. van Houtum
Department of Technology Management, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven.
Phone: 040 - 2475163
E-mail: g.j.v.houtum@tm.tue.nl, URL: http://www.tue.nl/staff/g.j.v.houtum