Two-commodity perishable inventory system with partial backlog demands.

Abstract

This article examines a two-commodity continuous review perishable inventory system. The demands are arrived at for each product by independent Markovian arrival processes (MAP). Lifetimes follow an exponential distribution. The commodities are assumed to be substitutable. If both commodities have reached zero, demand is backlogged up to predetermined levels. This article’s novelty has been a local purchase, which is made to clear the backlog instantaneously when demand reaches a predetermined level. In the steady-state, the joint probability distribution of inventory levels of both commodities is obtained. Several metrics of system performance in steady-state are derived and also provided as numerical examples to explain the optimum values of the system’s parameters.