Decision criteria and optimal inventory processes (Q5932854)

The book provides an introduction to the theory and application of economic, probability and fuzzy criteria in the study of multi-stage decision processes especially those typified by inventory and reservoir operation systems. It presents inventory theory by focusing on the processes and analysis underlying the decision criteria. In classical inventory theory, the optimal solution to an inventory problem is usually derived using an economic criterion, for example minimizing the total inventory system cost. In probability criterion, one maximizes the weighed sum of all probabilities that the inventory levels over their respective stages do not exceed some specified bounds. The advantage of the probability criterion is its simplicity; it does not require the estimation of the cost parameters and in addition the resultant policy form is similar in structure to that obtained using the economic criterion. Moreover it can also be extended to the more general case of fuzzy criterion. The book pays special attention to the analysis of some theoretical and applied aspects of fuzzy criteria and dynamic fuzzy criterion models. This opens up the way to bring in non-cost multi-stage inventory processes. The book consists of ten chapters. The table of contents is given below: Preface. 1. Introduction (34 pp). 2. Economic criterion models (26 pp). 3. Multidimensional economic criterion models (13 pp). 4. Bayesian solutions of economic criterion models (10 pp). 5. Minimax solutions of economic criterion models (9 pp). 6. Probability criterion models (16 pp). 7. Multistage game with probability criterion (14 pp). 8. Fuzzy criterion decision processes (34 pp). 9. Multidimensional fuzzy criterion dynamic programming (22 pp). 10. Further research and extensions (8 pp). Appendix (3 pp). Bibliography (14 pp) (170 references). Index (4 pp). Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the basic concepts of multistage decision processes and inventory management and a discussion on the role of decision criteria in optimal inventory processes. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the basic results of economic criterion inventory models. Chapter 4 provides the Bayesian updating process and Bayesian solution approaches. Chapter 5 discusses the minimax solution strategies in a dynamic inventory problem in which demands in successive stages are independent stochastic variables that have known mean and standard deviation. In chapter 6, the probability criterion models for multi-stage inventory processes are studied. Chapter 7 deals with the multi-stage game model with probability criterion. Chapters 8 and 9 extend these probability criterion models to fuzzy criterion models. Chapter 10 poses some research problems arising in fuzzy criterion inventory processes; for some of them the authors provide a sketch of the possible solution strategies. The book provides a theoretical as well as a practical introduction to decision criteria and inventory processes. It attempts to show how to incorporate various types of decision criteria other than the standard cost-minimization and profit-maximization. Thus the reader is exposed to some ideas of modeling the real world multi-stage inventory problems. The reviewer can not but agree with the authors that these special features will make the book particularly appealing to engineers and applied mathematicians, especially researchers and practitioners in operations research, management science and engineering. The style of writing is clear and pleasant and the presentation is lucid. The layout and printing are good.