The focus of the work is twofold. First, it provides an introduction into fundamental structural and behavioral aspects of periodic review inventory systems. Second, it includes a comprehensive study on analytical and optimization aspects of a specific class of those systems. For the latter purpose, general solution methods for problems of inventory management in discrete time are described and developed along with highly specialized methods to solve very specific problems related to the model variants examined. The work is thus addressed to students and practitioners who seek a deeper understanding of managing inventories in discrete time as well as to software developers who require implementation aids on specific problems of inventory management.

Thomas Wensing received his diploma in Information Science from the University of Cologne and his Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. After being a research assistant at the latter institution, he is nowadays working at the INFORM GmbH Aachen as a specialist for methods of Operations Research.

Introduction

Concepts and Definitions
Literature Overview
Basic Methods
Replenishment Processes
Analysis and Optimization
Conclusion.