Abstract for: A Parametric Analysis of the Effect of a Material Supply Line Delay in Stock Management

It is known that the presence of a supply line delay may lead to unwanted oscillatory stock behavior. It is also well known that fully considering the supply line in the ordering decisions, which means using the same adjustment time for stock adjustment and supply line adjustment terms, prevents unwanted oscillations. The effect of using the same or different adjustment times is relative. Therefore, in the literature, it is suggested that a weight coefficient should be used instead of explicitly using two separate adjustment times. This weight is simply equal to stock adjustment time divided by supply line adjustment time and it is named as weight of supply line. In this paper, we defined one more decision parameter that we call relative aggressiveness, which is equal to acquisition delay time divided by stock adjustment time. The existence or non-existence of stable or unstable oscillations is a function of the order of the supply line delay structure, weight of supply line, and relative aggressiveness. Usually, acquisition delay time and order of the supply line delay structure are not decision parameters; weight of supply line and stock adjustment time are. In this paper, we aim to give more insight to the readers about the selection of these two important parameters.