Cost-based Filtering for Stochastic Inventory Systems with Shortage Cost

Cost-based filtering is a promising technique able to improve search performance in combinatorial optimization problems. Such a technique has already been successfully applied to stochastic inventory control problems. We focus on the class of production/inventory control problems that considers a single product and a single stocking location, given a stochastic demand with a known non-stationary probability distribution. An exact CP approach has been recently introduced to find optimal policy parameters for this problem under ordering, holding and shortage cost. We extend such a CP approach using cost-based filtering. Our algorithm can efficiently solve to optimality instances of realistic size, often with no search effort at all. An extended version of this work is presented in the application track of the technical programme. 1 Problem definition and (R, S) policy Inventory control is a topic that has been