Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
In a job-shop manufacturing environment, consider a model in which the “job” is processed at several stages with random yields. Nondefective items move through the stages to supply a possibly random demand. At each stage there are linear costs of processing and work-in-process inventories and there are convex costs of end-item inventory. Decisions specify the lot sizes that are processed at the various stages. Easy computations specify a simply structured decision rule that minimizes the expected total cost.