REORDERING STRATEGIES FOR A NEWSBOY-TYPE PRODUCT

This paper considers the very common situation in which a single-perio d 'newsboy' type product may be ordered or produced twice during a sea son/period. We show that the explicit consideration of this reorder op portunity makes the newsboy problem very much richer. The specific ver sion considered in this paper allows a reorder during mid-season after the early-season demand has been observed, and this reorder arrives a fter a given lead time. The demand distributions during the various po rtions of the season may have very general distribution forms; also, t he late-season and early-season demands may be dependent. Solution pro cedures are developed to find the best way to exploit this reorder opp ortunity, and our numerical solutions indicate that this reorder oppor tunity can improve profits considerably as long as the product's profi t margin is not very high. Other real-world variations of this two-ord er newsboy problem are briefly discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B. V.