管理科学系学术讲座（9月24日）

时   间：2025年9月24日（周三） 14:00-15:30

地   点：管理学院思源楼524室

主讲人：卜金枝 香港理工大学助理教授

主持人：吕甲梦 复旦大学管理学院助理教授

主 题：Asymptotic Optimality of Simple Policies for Stochastic Inventory Systems with Delivery Lead Time and Purchase Returns

Abstract: We study a multi-period inventory control problem with a fixed replenishment lead time and stochastic purchase returns. Each unit of sales can be returned within a fixed return window after purchase and used to fulfill new demands. Unmet demands are either lost or backlogged. The objective is to find a replenishment policy to minimize the long-run average cost. Due to the presence of stochastic returns, even the optimal policy for the system with zero lead time is already complex. We focus on two simple policies: the base-stock policy and the myopic policy. We prove that, under a large class of demand distributions, the base-stock policy and the myopic policy are asymptotically optimal as the unit shortage penalty cost becomes large. Our results suggest the practical use of simple policies, especially for retail applications where the target service level is known to be very high. Our numerical results further demonstrate that, by appropriately incorporating the return probabilities and accounting for the returns dynamics, the empirical performances of both policies can be substantially improved. This is a joint work with Huanan Zhang and Stefanus Jasin.

Bio: Jinzhi Bu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include stochastic modeling and optimization, statistical and machine learning, data-driven decision making, and their applications to supply chain and revenue management. Prior to joining PolyU, she was a postdoctoral associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a B.S. degree from Nanjing University.