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Commercialisation of an inventory management solution for intermittent demand items

针对间歇性需求商品的库存管理解决方案的商业化

基本信息

批准号：
EP/G006075/1
负责人：
Argyrios Syntetos
金额：
$ 7.46万
依托单位：
University of Salford
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2009
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2009 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FG006075%2F1
关键词：
Commercialisation inventory management solution intermittent

项目摘要

Computerised inventory management applications rely upon three subsequent stages of computation: first, items are categorised based on the underlying demand structure (say, 'fast' and 'intermittent'); then an appropriate forecasting method is being used to estimate future requirements; finally, the forecasts are input to a stock control model that 'returns' when and how much to order by taking into account inventory cost and service level considerations. Regarding the first stage, current approaches used in industry utilise scientifically 'nave' and/or non-intuitively appealing classification parameters. With regards to the intermittent items (slow movers), sub-optimal forecasting methods are being used; in addition, the stock control models employed for this category are far from appropriate since they generally have been developed for fast rather than slow moving items. Some innovations have been proposed and implemented in practice by commercial software, in particular with respect to the 'forecasting stage'. Nevertheless, the results are far from optimal since the related solutions still fail to appreciate the distinct interaction between the three stages, thus resulting in improvements that are only marginal. The Principal Investigator (PI) has generated over the years a series of contributions in all three above discussed areas in the context of intermittent demand. His research has reflected a more holistic perspective into the problem of inventory management and with the support of EPSRC has produced an iterative, theory informed, robust methodology the commercialisation of which constitutes the purpose of this proposal to EPSRC. Currently, there are not any holistic inventory management commercial solutions that have been designed specifically for intermittent items. All packages attempt to accommodate in their functionality the entire stock base hold by their potential clients. This lack of specialization on intermittent items offers our proposition a unique selling point. Experimentation with datasets from RAF, British Aerospace, Brother International as well as the automotive and oil industries has demonstrated inventory cost reductions of up to 25% in stock bases that represent up to 3 billion. The PI has developed a set of proprietary worksheets (and Visual Basic, VB applications) containing all of the analytical procedures required to process empirical data and replicate the functions of the corresponding real systems for the purpose of simulating their performance under (a) the methods currently utilised and (b) the proposed amended methodology. Problems associated with the spreadsheets relate to: i) their complexity and the fact that they would require a significant amount of training for practical application; ii) the hard-coding of all of the path and file names that renders their application inflexible on different PCs; iii) security related issues; iv) the rather slow (for industry standards) computational performance since the number of SKUs from clients may easily exceed 100,000. The Follow-on Fund (FoF) will provide the PI with sufficient resources to finance the development of a pre-prototype BETA application designed to simplify the usability of his theory. Development of this Beta version is imperative to the eventual commercial implementation of his research. The commercial need for such a solution and its potential has been repeatedly demonstrated though numerous scientific experiments on empirical data. The Beta version will allow the implementation of the new solution and the demonstration of its benefits in a real business environment.

计算机化库存管理应用程序依赖于三个后续的计算阶段：首先，根据潜在的需求结构（例如，“快速”和“间歇性”）对项目进行分类；然后使用适当的预测方法来估计未来的需求；最后，将预测输入到库存控制模型中，该模型通过考虑库存成本和服务水平，“返回”订购的时间和数量。关于第一阶段，目前工业中使用的方法利用科学上的“朴素”和/或非直觉上吸引人的分类参数。对于间歇性项目（缓慢移动），正在使用次优预测方法；此外，用于这一类别的库存控制模型远远不合适，因为它们通常是为快速而不是缓慢移动的物品开发的。一些创新已经被商业软件提出并在实践中实施，特别是在“预测阶段”方面。然而，结果远非最优，因为相关的解决方案仍然无法理解三个阶段之间的明显相互作用，从而导致的改进只是边际的。多年来，在间歇性需求的背景下，首席研究员（PI）在上述所有三个讨论领域做出了一系列贡献。他的研究反映了对库存管理问题的更全面的看法，并在EPSRC的支持下，产生了一种迭代的、有理论依据的、强大的方法，其商业化构成了向EPSRC提出建议的目的。目前，还没有任何专门为间歇性物品设计的整体库存管理商业解决方案。所有包都试图在其功能中容纳潜在客户持有的整个库存基础。间歇性产品缺乏专业化，这为我们的主张提供了一个独特的卖点。利用英国皇家空军、英国航空航天公司、兄弟国际公司以及汽车和石油行业的数据集进行的实验表明，在库存基础上，库存成本降低了25%，相当于30亿美元。PI已开发了一套专有的工作表（以及Visual Basic、VB应用程序），其中包含处理经验数据所需的所有分析程序，并复制相应实际系统的功能，以模拟它们在(a)目前使用的方法和(b)建议修订方法下的表现。与电子表格相关的问题涉及：i)它们的复杂性以及它们需要大量实际应用培训的事实；ii)硬编码所有的路径和文件名，使他们的应用程序在不同的pc上不灵活；Iii)安全相关问题；iv)计算性能相当慢（按照行业标准），因为来自客户的sku数量很容易超过100,000。后续基金（FoF）将为首席研究员提供足够的资源，资助其开发预原型BETA应用程序，以简化其理论的可用性。这个Beta版本的开发对于他的研究的最终商业实现是必不可少的。对这种解决方案的商业需求及其潜力已经通过对经验数据的大量科学实验反复证明。测试版将允许在真实的业务环境中实现新的解决方案并展示其优点。