Lot sizing with random yield and different qualities

This paper considers a production/inventory system where items produced/purchased are of different qualities: Types A and B. Type A items are of perfect quality, and Type B items are of imperfect quality; but not necessarily defective; and have a lower selling price. The percentage of Type A (the yield rate) is assumed to be a random variable with known probability distribution. The electronics industry gives good examples of such situations. We extend the classical single period (newsvendor) and the economic order quantity (EOQ) models by accounting for random supply and for imperfect quality (Type 13) items which are assumed to have their own demand and cost structure. We develop mathematical models and prove concavity of the expected profit function for both situations. We also present detailed analysis and numerical results. We focus on comparing the profitability of the novel proposed models with models from the literature (and derivatives of these models) that develop the optimal order quantity based on the properties of Type A items only (and ignore Type B items). We find that accounting for Type B items can significantly improve profitability. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.