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IMA Journal of Management Mathematics Advance Access published online on January 21, 2008
IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, doi:10.1093/imaman/dpm038
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© The authors 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. All rights reserved.

Characterizing the frequency of orders received by a stockist

E. A. Shale{dagger}

Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

John E. Boylan

Applied Social Sciences and Humanities, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, Buckinghamshire HP11 2JZ, UK

F. R. Johnston

Kerridge Computer Company, Charnham Park, Hungerford RG17 0YU, UK

{dagger} Email: estelle.shale{at}warwick.ac.uk

Received on 26 January 2007. Accepted on 19 November 2007.

It is regularly asserted that the frequency of orders received by a stockist can be represented as a Poisson process, but very little corroborative evidence has been published. This paper presents some results supporting the assumption. An adaptation to the standard testing methodology is presented which overcomes the complications arising from the necessity of sampling from time series data. The new approach is applied to a large range of stock-keeping units. Except for the extreme tail of the distribution, which is of little interest for most inventory applications, it is found that the frequency of orders is well represented by a Poisson process.

Keywords: forecasting; inventory control; intermittent demand; demand distributions


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