Multi-Echelon Inventory Impact of Varied Ordering Policies on Realized Service Levels

Wholesalers face an environment where different retail establishments may follow different ordering policies. Typically, wholesalers do not consider the individual retail establishments ordering policies when setting and computing their service levels. This research looked at whether there was a negative impact on retailers due to interactions between ordering policies. Current research has focused on serial relationships in multi-echelon inventory problems. This research extends existing research by assessing the impacts of differing ordering policies upon service level performance for each retail level establishment in a parallel multi-echelon inventory environment, for slow-demand items. Conducted through the use of simulation, one model was developed representing three ordering policies Periodic Review, Continuous Review, and an Instantaneous Reorder Policy. Each policy was isolated, and the models run to get a baseline of performance. Finally, the complete model was run, and comparisons were made between the performance of the policies alone, and interacting.