Identifying inventory excess and service risk in medical devices : a simulation approach

Medical devices companies struggle to balance between inventory and service performance, as the products are non-interchangeable and inventory investment is expensive. To find the right level of inventory, we first used unsupervised clustering method to find demand pattern uncertainty for each product. Then, we developed a simulation-based approach to determine the required inventory to achieve a required service level guarantee. We further explored policy changes in the demand fulfillment process to identify how the company can effectively improve performance without increasing inventory level. After comparing different results, we concluded that reduction of replenishment lead time is the most effective measure. The methodology can be applied to a wide range of products and sectors.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Supply Chain Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Authors dc:creator

• Rey, Maria (Maria de los Santos)
• Xu, Xiaofan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Omar Sherif Elwakil.

• Supply Chain Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112859

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/112859