An approximation for the fill rate, i.e. the percentage of demand being delivered from inventory on hand immediately, is derived for items in a periodic review inventory control system with lost sales.
We assume demand is stochastic and discrete, leadtime are positive and replenishments are made in
multiples of a given fixed case pack size.
Most literature on inventory control systems assumes that
unmet demand is backordered. The major reason for this is that the analysis of a general lost sales
inventory system is known to be hard. To find an approximation for the fill rate, given a safety stock, we
start with existing analytical approximations. By applying linear regression, we slightly modify these
existing approximations. The new approximation is tested for a wide set of parameters and performs
very well: the average approximation error for the fill rate is only 0.0028 and the standard deviation of
the approximation error is 0.0045. Since the approximations are very fast, this result enables inventory
controllers dealing with a lost sales inventory system to set safety stocks in accordance with the target
service level set by their management in an effective way. The results of our study also show that the
assumption that the lost sales system can simply be approximated by a backordering system if the
target fill rate is at least 95%, may lead to serious approximation errors. These errors are particularly
large when the lead-time is large or demand uncertainty is low and when on average there is at least
one replenishment order outstanding.