The modular assembly system can make it possible for the variety of products to be assembled in a short lead time. In this system, necessary components are assembled to optional components tailor to customers’ orders. Budget for inventory investments composed of inventory and purchasing costs are practically limited and the purchasing cost is often paid when an order is arrived. Service cost is assumed to be proportional to service level and it is included in budget constraint. We develop a heuristic procedure to find a good solution for a continuous review inventory system of the modular assembly system with a budget constraint. A regression analysis using a quadratic function based on the exponential function is applied to the cumulative density function of a normal distribution. With the regression result, an efficient heuristics is proposed by using an approximation for some complex functions that are composed of exponential functions only. A simple problem is introduced to illustrate the proposed heuristics.

In this paper, we develop an efficient approach to solve a continuous review inventory system with a budget constraint when the semi-finished product and optional components are required to be assembled. We are, in particular, interested in a budget constraint that includes a service level. The service cost, such as labor and facility costs, tends to increase as the service level increase, and it makes the problem difficult to solve. Assuming that the reorder point for a semi-finished product is given, we show that the order quantity for the semi-finished product and the order quantity and reorder point for optional components can be determined by minimizing the total cost that includes setup cost, inventory holding cost, and shortage cost. The performance of the proposed approach is tested by numerical examples. By using sensitivity analysis, we conclude that, as the reorder point for semi-finished product increases, the order quantity for semi-finished product increases, whereas the order quantity and reorder point of optional components decreases.

If service level is increased, then service cost such as labor cost and facility cost will be increased. This service cost is included in the budget constraint in this paper. This service cost makes the problem difficult to solve. The purpose of this research is to develop an efficient approach for a continuous review inventory system with budget constraint when the semi-finished product and optional components are required to be assembled. Assuming that the reorder point for semi-finished product is given, order quantity for semi-finished product and order quantity and reorder point will be determined to minimize total cost that includes setup cost, inventory holding cost, and shortage cost. The performance of the proposed approach is checked by using an example.