The impact of production time variability on make-to-stock queue performance

In this paper, we exploit the distributional Little’s law to obtain the steady-state distribution of the number of customers in a GI/G/1 make-to-stock queueing system. Non-exponential service times in make-to-stock queue modeling are usually avoided or at best, considered in approximations due to difficulties in developing an exact method. By providing a numerical solution of the GI/G/1 make-to-stock queue, we observed the impact of production time variability on optimal inventory control policies. The numerical results prove the degree of errors in the results if an exponential service time distribution were assumed instead of the actual distribution.