A Stochastic Dynamic Programming Approach to Revenue Management in a Make-to-Stock Production System

Rainer Quante, Moritz Fleischmann and Herbert Meyr

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: In this paper, we consider a make-to-stock production system with known exogenous replenishments and multiple customer classes. The objective is to maximize profit over the planning horizon by deciding whether to accept or reject a given order, in anticipation of more profitable future orders. What distinguishes this setup from classical airline revenue management problems is the explicit consideration of past and future replenishments and the integration of inventory holding and backlogging costs. If stock is on-hand, orders can be fulfilled immediately, backlogged or rejected. In shortage situations, orders can be either rejected or backlogged to be fulfilled from future arriving supply. The described decision problem occurs in many practical settings, notably in make-to-stock production systems, in which production planning is performed on a mid-term level, based on aggregated demand forecasts. In the short term, acceptance decisions about incoming orders are then made according to stock on-hand and scheduled production quantities. We model this problem as a stochastic dynamic program and characterize its optimal policy. It turns out that the optimal fulfillment policy has a relatively simple structure and is easy to implement. We evaluate this policy numerically and find that it systematically outperforms common current fulfillment policies, such as first-come-first-served and deterministic optimization.

Keywords: advanced planning systems; make-to-stock production; order fulfillment; revenue management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 D46 L23 M M11 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-03-12
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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