Production and Inventory Control of a Single Product Assemble-to-Order System with Multiple Customer Classes
研究一个按订单装配系统的最优生产与库存控制问题，系统包含多个组件、一个最终产品和多类客户。通过马尔可夫决策过程，发现最优策略是动态基础库存策略和动态配给策略，并与常用启发式策略对比，显示其性能优越。
We consider the optimal production and inventory control of an assemble-to-order system with m components, one end-product, and n customer classes. A control policy specifies when to produce each component and, whenever an order is placed, whether or not to satisfy it from on-hand inventory. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process and characterize the structure of an optimal policy. We show that a base-stock production policy is optimal, but the base-stock level for each component is dynamic and depends on the inventory level of all other components (more specifically, it is nondecreasing). We show that the optimal inventory allocation for each component is a rationing policy with different rationing levels for different demand classes. The rationing levels for each component are dynamic and also nondecreasing in the inventory level of all other components. We compare the performance of the optimal policy to heuristic policies, including the commonly used base-stock policy with fixed base-stock levels, and find them to perform surprisingly well, especially for systems with lost sales.