An intuitive approach to inventory control with optimal stopping
本文展示如何利用Breiman的最优停止理论，简洁证明(s,S)策略在定期盘点库存问题中能最小化长期平均成本，并给出高效算法。
In this research note, we show that a simple application of Breiman’s work on optimal stopping in 1964 leads to an elementary proof that (s,S) policies minimize the long-run average cost for periodic-review inventory control problems. The method of proof is appealing as it only depends on the fundamental concepts of renewal-reward processes, optimal stopping, dynamic programming, and root-finding. Moreover, it leads to an efficient algorithm to compute the optimal policy parameters. If Breiman’s paper would have received the attention it deserved, computational methods dealing with (s,S)-policies would have been found about three decades earlier than the famous algorithm of Zheng and Federgruen in 1991.