On a CP approach to solve a MINLP inventory model
Roberto Rossi, Ş. Armağan Tarim, Brahim Hnich, Steven Prestwich, Eligius M. T. Hendrix · Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling · 2010
One of the most important policies adopted in inventory control is the replenishment cycle policy.Such a policy provides an effective means of dampening planning instability and coping with demand uncertainty.We describe a constraint programming approach for computing optimal replenishment cycle policy parameters under non-stationary stochastic demand, ordering, holding and shortage costs.Our solution approach exploits the convexity of the cost-function to dynamically compute during search the cost associated with a given decision variable assignment.By using our model we gauge the quality of an existing approximate mixed integer linear programming approach that exploits a piecewise linear approximation for the complex cost function.Furthermore, our computational experience shows that our approach can solve realistic instances in a fraction of a second.