Multiechelon inventory systems with lateral supply

Craig C. Sherbrooke

Naval Research Logistics (NRL), 1992, vol. 39, issue 1, 29-40

Abstract: We develop approximations to estimate the expected backorders in a multiechelon system in which lateral supply actions between bases are allowed when a backorder occurs. These approximations are easy to compute, and the average absolute error over a wide range of parameter values is less than 4% when items are depot repairable, even when bases are dissimilar. With lateral supply, backorder reductions of 30‐50% are not uncommon, and a 72% reduction was observed in two cases. Lateral supply becomes more important with low demand rates. A similar approach was unsuccessful for base‐repairable items. However, lateral supply has a beneficial effect only when the lateral supply time is very short, 1/4 or less of the average base repair time. Even in such cases lateral supply is unlikely to be important in an actual application, because base management can expedite repair of critical items.

Date: 1992
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6750(199202)39:13.0.CO;2-L

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:wly:navres:v:39:y:1992:i:1:p:29-40

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Naval Research Logistics (NRL) from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().