Impact of the continuous and periodic assessment of a buffer replenishment on the DDMRP method

Like Kanban or classic inventory management, Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP) assumes that an order is created when the stock level drops below a given level. The assessment of this level can be continuous or periodic. A periodic evaluation can force better repartition of the load over time. DDMRP characterizes the demand for a product by its average daily demand. This aggregation specifies neither the average size of the elementary demands nor the average duration between two elementary demands. Based on a discrete event simulation model, this study suggests that, at least for a flow-shop organization, the DDMRP method, with continuous order generation, is suitable for large mean time between elementary orders, while periodic observation improves the method for small values of it.

Mots clés

• DDMRP
• periodicity
• buffer
• inventory management
• orders