Studying the impact of various inventory policies on a supply chain with intermittent supply disruptions

The management of supply risks has become a highly critical component of supply chain management. Supply failures effect on the supply chain can be costly and lead to significant customer delivery delays. Inventory management is an important tool to mitigate the risks arising due to these failures. But there has always been a confusion on which inventory method will be best for such situations and what should be the values of the parameters. This study fulfills a part of this gap by studying the impact of changes in the parameter values of periodic inventory policy on supply disruption situations. The process is simulated using discrete event simulation with the inventory and backorder levels taken as the output parameters. The study shows that there is a definite connection between the costs experienced at a level in the chain and its distance from the disruption point.