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Inventory Ordering Decisions Over The Product Life Cycle, Matthew J. Seiler

Honors Theses

This report will link two key business concepts together. It will first examine the characteristics of different inventory replenishment systems used by purchasing managers. Second, it will bring the marketing phenomenon of the product life cycle into the picture. The varying demand patterns found in a typical product life cycle curve will become test data for a simulation exercise to determine which of four ordering models yield the lowest combination of holding and ordering costs. The costs related to holding finished good inventories account for a large portion of a firm's total cost structure (Adam and Ebert, 1989). To stay …