On the Use of Importance Measures in the Reliability of Inventory Systems, Considering the Cost

In order to maximize inventory benefits or minimize costs, reliability and cost of inventory control models need to be identified and analyzed. These importance measures are one important approach to recognize and evaluate system weaknesses. However, importance measures have fewer applications in inventory systems’ reliability. Considering the cost, this paper mainly discusses the reliability change of performance parameters with the importance measures in inventory systems. The calculation methods of differential importance and Birnbaum importance are studied in the inventory control model with shortages. By comparing the importance values of various parameters in the model, the optimization analysis of the inventory model can be used to identify the key parameters, so as to effectively reduce the total inventory cost. The importance order and the identification of key parameters are helpful to increase the operational efficiency of the inventory control and provide effective methods for improving the inventory management. Lastly, a case study with a shortage and limited inventory capacity is used to demonstrate the proposed model.