An optimal critical level policy for inventory systems with two demand classes

Traditional inventory systems treat all demands of a given item equally. This approach is optimal if the penalty costs of all customers are the same, but it is not optimal if the penalty costs are different for different customer classes. Then, demands of customers with high penalty costs must be filled before demands of customers with low penalty costs. A commonly used inventory policy for dealing with demands with different penalty costs is the critical level inventory policy. Under this policy demands with low penalty costs are filled as long as inventory is above a certain critical level. If the inventory reaches the critical level, only demands with high penalty costs are filled and demands with low penalty costs are backordered. In this article, we consider a critical level policy for a periodic review inventory system with two demand classes. Because traditional approaches cannot be used to find the optimal parameters of the policy, we use a multidimensional Markov chain to model the inventory system. We use a sample path approach to prove several properties of this inventory system. Although the cost function is not convex, we can build on these properties to develop an optimization approach that finds the optimal solution. We also present some numerical results. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008     

线-面传输线Taylor与Agrawal模型解的比较

基于Maxwell方程推导描述外电磁场对导线的耦合传输线模型有Taylor,Agrawal和Rachidi三种模型,每个耦合公式给出相同的传输线响应,但是它们之间又有细微的差别,Nucci和Rachidi通过数值方法验证在圆柱形雷电电磁场激励下这三种线-面传输线模型在负载终端具有相同的全电压解。本文采用解析的方法对线-面传输线Taylor模型和Agrawal模型进行研究,获得了这两个模型基于平面电磁波激励下的终端负载响应的解析解,证明了它们的解析解是相同的。也就是说,线-面传输线Taylor模型和Agrawal模型其实是对同一个解的不同描述。因此,在实际应用时,可以根据具体情况来选择不同的传输线模型进行求解。