Performance Analysis of Make to Stock Supply Chains Using Discrete-Time Queueing Models

Manufacturing supply chains are formed out of complex interconnections among several vendors, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retailers, logisticsproviders. In this paper, we concern ourselves with a Supply Chain Network(SCN) consisting of single manufacturing plant, one warehouse and several retail outlets. We present a discrete-time queueing model which can be used for evaluating the performance of a given SCN which processes customer orders at discrete time intervals. It can also be used for det ermining the optimal inventory level at the warehouse that minimizes total cost of carry ing inventory and back order cost associated with serving orders in the backlog queue, subject to service level constraint in terms of expected waiting t ime for customers. The model is analyzed by using discrete-time queues. We use CONWIP as th e inventory control model