Inventory stacking with partial information

Daqin Wang, Ou Tang and Lihua Zhang

International Journal of Production Research, 2024, vol. 62, issue 1-2, 586-604

Abstract: An inventory stacking decision assigns positions to items which are stacked vertically, such as containers in container terminals and steel plates in steel plants. The performance of stacking decisions is greatly affected by the arrival and departure information on items. We study an inventory stacking problem with partial information based on industrial observation in a steel plant. On the inbound side, we investigate three levels of information on future arriving items and their effect on performance. On the outbound side, we study the impact of the retrieval sequence, which is often random. We develop models incorporating different availabilities of information and determine stacking strategies. The study shows that the stacking strategy and stacking performance depend highly on information quality and space utilisation. Especially, when the space utilisation is high, low-quality information deteriorates the performance and such information should be ignored. This contradicts the general belief that more information should bring better performance. The study further proposes a time window allocation approach to reduce the uncertainty in retrieval, and it is effective in improving stacking performance.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2023.2219768 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:62:y:2024:i:1-2:p:586-604

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TPRS20

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2023.2219768

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Research is currently edited by Professor A. Dolgui

More articles in International Journal of Production Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().