OPTIMAL POLICY FOR A PRODUCTION-INVENTORY SYSTEM WITH SETUP COST AND AVERAGE COST CRITERION

One of the most fundamental results in inventory theory is the optimality of (s,S) policy for inventory systems with setup cost. This result is established under a key assumption of infinite ordering/production capacity. Several studies have shown that, when the ordering/production capacity is finite, the optimal policy for the inventory system with setup cost is very complicated and indeed, only partial characterization for the optimal policy is possible. In this paper, we consider a continuous review production/inventory system with finite capacity and setup cost. The demand follows a Poisson process and a demand that cannot be satisfied upon arrival is back-logged. We show that the optimal control policy has a very simple structure when the holding/shortage cost rate is quasi-convex. We also develop efficient algorithms to compute the optimal control parameters.