The difficulties encountered in the practice of inventory control led
us to several criticisms of the classical inventory models. We define
another approach for the determination of inventory policies based on
the notion of efficient policy surfaces. We extend this notion to mult
i-item inventory control by defining the concepts of family and aggreg
ate item. Using several attributes, we build families of items. In eve
ry family, an aggregate item is built in order for the inventory pract
itioner to make decisions.