Comparison of heuristic procedures for the inventory replenishment problem with a linear trend in demand

In this paper we consider the inventory replenishment problem with linearly time-varying demand over a fixed time horizon. We first extend the Silverʹs heuristic and the continuous part period and least-unit cost procedures. We then evaluate the cost and computation time performances of these three heuristics along with two more procedures proposed by Mitra et al. and Phelps. The computational results show that Phelpsʹs heuristic outperformed all other procedures in most of the 5120 test problems. Moreover, the empirical study did not reveal any significant differences in the cost performances of the remaining procedures.