This article evaluates the premise

This article evaluates the premise of demand adherence to normal distribution
in inventory management models, showing that this can lead to significant
distortions, mainly to stock control of very low and low consumption items.
The article thus proposes a framework to help managers determine the best
stock policy to be adopted given product demand characteristics. The article
also presents the use of such a framework in a case study, in an attempt to
illustrate the benefits of adopting probability density functions that are more
adequate to product demand characteristics, in terms of total costs of stocks.