A Comparison of Reorder Point and Material Requirements Planning Inventory Control Logic*
通过仿真实验比较了基于未来需求时间信息的物料需求计划（MRP）与基于历史平均需求的再订货点（ROP）两种库存策略的效率，发现MRP在合理条件下更优，仅在预测与需求关系极度扭曲时ROP才胜出。
ABSTRACT This paper reports the results of simulation experiments that compared the inventory efficiency (i.e., the customer service level provided by a given level of inventory) for two different inventory policies. One of these policies uses time‐phased information on future demands like that found in material requirements planning (MRP) systems, while the other (the reorder point or ROP policy) relies on forecasts implicitly based on average past demands. After establishing that the MRP policies dominate for reasonable conditions, the uncertainty of the forecasts was manipulated until the policy preference was reversed. It requires a very perverse relationship between the forecast and actual demand before ROP beats MRP on inventory efficiency.