A queuing system with inventory and competing suppliers
by Mohammad Saffari; Mohsen S. Sajadieh; Farhad Hassanzadeh
European J. of Industrial Engineering (EJIE), Vol. 13, No. 3, 2019

Abstract: A single-server queuing system is considered where service consumes one unit of inventory which is maintained by two suppliers with different price and replenishment lead times. During inventory stockout, new customers refuse to enter the system (lost sales) but the existing ones remain in queue until inventory becomes available again (backlogged demand). We analytically derive the joint distribution of queue length and on-hand inventory in steady state and determine supplier-specific ordering policies that maximise the average system profit. A special case of the system with multiple servers is addressed. A numerical study reveals dynamics of the optimal ordering policy with respect to price and replenishment lead-times. [Received: 15 April 2018; Revised: 21 November 2018; Accepted: 18 December 2018]

Online publication date: Mon, 03-Jun-2019

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the European J. of Industrial Engineering (EJIE):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com