Method and apparatus for inventory control of a manufacturing or distribution process
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A computer implemented method of inventory control of a manufacturing or distribution process using a computer model of the manufacturing or distribution process, which comprises the steps of:
- (a) determining a demand forecast by using an optimized historical weighting factor,(b) determining an upper and a lower bound of a planned inventory by explicitly accounting for the customer order lead time, and(c) computing a production schedule at predetermined intervals to maintain an actual inventory between the upper and lower bounds of the planned inventory.
4 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method and apparatus, using a computer model, to control a manufacturing or distribution process, which determines a demand forecast by using an optimized historical weighting factor, determines an upper and a lower bound of a planned inventory by explicitly accounting for the customer order lead time, and computes a production schedule at predetermined intervals to maintain an actual inventory between the upper and lower bounds of the planned inventory.
-
Citations
20 Claims
-
1. A computer implemented method of inventory control of a manufacturing or distribution process using a computer model of the manufacturing or distribution process, which comprises the steps of:
-
(a) determining a demand forecast by using an optimized historical weighting factor, (b) determining an upper and a lower bound of a planned inventory by explicitly accounting for the customer order lead time, and (c) computing a production schedule at predetermined intervals to maintain an actual inventory between the upper and lower bounds of the planned inventory. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20)
-
-
16. A method of inventory control of a manufacturing or distribution process comprising:
-
(a) computing a production schedule that reads current inventory from an inventory tracking system, reads the open orders from an order entry transaction system, reads invoiced shipments from the transaction system, (b) at pre-determined intervals regenerating a demand forecast, wherein (i) the demand forecast is computed by dividing the shipment data into predetermined intervals, (ii) designating a first predetermined number of intervals as a first history period and designating a second predetermined number of intervals as a second history period, (iii) using the second history period to compute predicted demand for the intervals of the first history period, (iv) using the second history period to compute the error between the predicted demand for the intervals of the first history period and the actual demand for the intervals of the first history period to determine a historical weighting factor F, said factor being between 0 and 1, and the weighting factor being determined by comparing the predicted demand with the actual demand for each interval of the first history period, the weighting factor being optimized by a recursive method of computation and determined such that the mean average deviation of the difference between the actual demand and the predicted demand is minimized, and (c) at predetermined intervals recalculating the upper bound of the planned inventory, where the upper bound is computed as the sum of cycle stock and safety stock, wherein (i) the cycle stock is computed using the predicted demand and the historical weighting factor F, and (ii) the safety stock is computed using a method wherein the period of risk value is replaced by the difference of the period of risk and the customer order lead time, where the period of risk may be a single value, a Gaussian distribution function, a Poisson distribution function, or a probability distribution function determined from historical data, where the customer order lead time may be a single value, a Gaussian distribution function, a Poisson distribution function, or a probability distribution function determined from historical data, (d) at predetermined intervals recalculating the lower bound of the planned inventory, where the lower bound is equal to the safety stock, wherein (i) the safety stock is computed using a method wherein the period of risk value is replaced by the difference of the period of risk and the customer order lead time, where the period of risk may be a single value, a Gaussian distribution function, a Poisson distribution function, or a probability distribution function determined from historical data, where the customer order lead time may be a single value, a Gaussian distribution function, a Poisson distribution function, or a probability distribution function determined from historical data. - View Dependent Claims (17)
-
Specification