Abstract
This study considers an inventory rationing problem which maintains inventory to meet various requests of a discrete number of priority classes. When there is limited available quantity in the warehouse, we prefer to fulfill the higher priority requests than lower priority requests. To face the uncertain factors during replenishment lead time, we develop two rationing approaches, called dynamic stochastic inventory rationing decision procedure (DSIR) and risk level inventory rationing decision procedure (RLIR), to determine whether to fulfill the request of each arrival customer. The objective of the problem is to provide inventory to higher priority requests before any lower priority requests. Also, we would rather satisfying lower priority request than having inventory leftover when the replenishment arrives. The simulation experiments show that RLIR maintains high fill rate of the first priority request more aggressive than other approaches. Whereas, DSIR maintains a good fill rate of first priority requests, while keeping a high overall fill rate. Furthermore, unlike previous studies, the proposed approaches can handle inventory systems with random request quantity and random replenishment lead time. Even under the case of constant request quantity and constant lead time, the performance of proposed approaches is better than previous approach.