Inter-departure times in base-stock inventory-queues (Q702039)

The authors introduce a generic base-stock inventory-queue which always contains a predetermined quantity of items. Demands arrive one at a time, and each demand triggers an order for a new item to be produced in the production run. The arriving demand is satisfied from the inventory buffer if possible; otherwise, it is backordered and is satisfied by production output. It is shown that the inter-departure times from a stationary inventory queue can be described in terms of the residual time for a production completion. Expressions for the probability distributions and squared coefficient of variations of interdeparture times are obtained for base-stock inventory-queues with birth-death production processes. Special cases of this for M/M/\(c\) and M/M/\(\infty\) are also discussed.