An office supply store keeps a small inventory of printer cartridges. The ink in them can dry out, so they have an expiration date, which in turn means that the store manager does not want to keep too many on hand. On the other hand, the manager does not want to be out of stock when a customer wants to buy a cartridge. Assume that customer demands occur one at a time (that is, customers never want to buy more than one at a time) according to a Poisson process with a mean rate of two per week. Assume that the store manager can order replacement stock one carton at a time, where a carton contains six cartridges. After placing an order for replacement, the store has to wait for a period of time (order processing plus delivery) that is negative exponentially distributed with a mean of one week. Such an order will be placed by the manager as soon as the stock falls to one cartridge. a. Set up an ergodic Markov process model to track the level of inventory. The states should correspond to the number of cartridges in stock. Each customer demands decreases the stock by one unit. The replacement events will increase the stock by six. b. What is the probability that a customer wanting one of these cartridges finds the store out of stock?

Linear Algebra: A Modern Introduction
4th Edition
ISBN:9781285463247
Author:David Poole
Publisher:David Poole
Chapter2: Systems Of Linear Equations
Section2.4: Applications
Problem 28EQ
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An office supply store keeps a small inventory of printer cartridges. The ink in them can dry out, so they have an
expiration date, which in turn means that the store manager does not want to keep too many on hand. On the other
hand, the manager does not want to be out of stock when a customer wants to buy a cartridge. Assume that customer
demands occur one at a time (that is, customers never want to buy more than one at a time) according to a Poisson
process with a mean rate of two per week. Assume that the store manager can order replacement stock one carton at a
time, where a carton contains six cartridges. After placing an order for replacement, the store has to wait for a period of
time (order processing plus delivery) that is negative exponentially distributed with a mean of one week. Such an order
will be placed by the manager as soon as the stock falls to one cartridge.
a.
Set up an ergodic Markov process model to track the level of inventory. The states should correspond to the
number of cartridges in stock. Each customer demands decreases the stock by one unit. The replacement events will
increase the stock by six.
b.
What is the probability that a customer wanting one of these cartridges finds the store out of stock?
Transcribed Image Text:An office supply store keeps a small inventory of printer cartridges. The ink in them can dry out, so they have an expiration date, which in turn means that the store manager does not want to keep too many on hand. On the other hand, the manager does not want to be out of stock when a customer wants to buy a cartridge. Assume that customer demands occur one at a time (that is, customers never want to buy more than one at a time) according to a Poisson process with a mean rate of two per week. Assume that the store manager can order replacement stock one carton at a time, where a carton contains six cartridges. After placing an order for replacement, the store has to wait for a period of time (order processing plus delivery) that is negative exponentially distributed with a mean of one week. Such an order will be placed by the manager as soon as the stock falls to one cartridge. a. Set up an ergodic Markov process model to track the level of inventory. The states should correspond to the number of cartridges in stock. Each customer demands decreases the stock by one unit. The replacement events will increase the stock by six. b. What is the probability that a customer wanting one of these cartridges finds the store out of stock?
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