NONSTATIONARY ORDERING POLICIES FOR MULTIITEM INVENTORY SYSTEMS SUBJECT TO A SINGLE RESOURCE CONSTRAINT

This paper studies the multi-item inventory problem with a single cons traint. Two well-known approaches to this problem are the Lagrangian m ethod and the fixed-cycle approach. Both of these methods generate sta tionary ordering policies. A competing approach is presented here that generates non-stationary ordering policies, with order quantities tha t vary over time. These non-stationary policies are, in all cases, pre ferred to those generated by the Lagrangian approach, and in some case s preferred to those generated by the fixed-cycle approach. Computatio nal results comparing the three methods are also given.