Which is true about the economic order quantity?

Calculating Economic Order Quantity

The following formula is used to calculate the EOQ:

Economic Order Quantity:
(2 x S x D)/H

Annual Demand (D)

The Annual demand is the number of units that you sell annually. If actual units are not available, then you can use expected sales figure based on your sales trend.

Order cost (S)

This refers to the costs that are involved with an order but cannot be directly associated with the purchase cost.

Holding cost (H)

This refers to all the costs that are involved in storing or handling the items in your store or warehouse. Usually, holding costs are fixed in nature.

What are the components of Economic Order Quantity?

Annual Demand Calculation (D)

The Annual demand is the number of units that you sell annually. If actual units are not available, then you can use expected sales figure based on your sales trend.

The following table will give you a better idea about what the other factors are that can have an impact on demand and your business operations:

Market conditions

  • Change in customer taste
  • Competition
  • Shift in industry standards

Economic conditions

  • Change in tax rate
  • Trade regulations, domestic and international
  • Monetary policy

Order Cost Calculation (S)

This refers to the costs that are involved with an order but cannot be directly associated with the purchase cost.

  • Transport charges and custom duties incurred during the movement of the items
  • Clerical charges paid to an outsourced agency for recording transaction
  • Salary paid to the quality check team before the items enter your warehouse
  • Amount spent in setting up a machine or equipments

Holding cost calculation (H)

This refers to all the costs that are involved in storing or handling the items in your store or warehouse. Usually, holding costs are fixed in nature.

  • Monthly rent for the shop or warehouse that you use to store items
  • Employees salary and warehouse labor wages
  • Electricity and insurance cost

Assumptions while calculating EOQ

The EOQ is a great metric for any business dealing with the buying and selling of goods. However, it's important to remember the assumptions that the EOQ formula is based on:

The bottom line

Economic Order Quantity may not consider all the factors that affect each business, but it is still a powerful tool to help an entrepreneur or manager to make more calculated decisions. What makes the EOQ a compelling tool is that it is dynamic and can be revisited from time to time as your business grows. If there's a change in any of your inventory costs, you can always tweak the formula and generate a new EOQ to suit the current conditions.

Calculating the EOQ for your business helps you find a good balance for your order and inventory costs, which are easy to overlook in day-to-day business. The EOQ formula shouldn't be taken as gospel, but it's a useful tool for informed, effective inventory control.

Economic Order Quantity (EOQ), also known as Economic Buying Quantity (EPQ), is the order quantity that minimizes the total holding costs and ordering costs in inventory management. It is one of the oldest classical production scheduling models. The model was developed by Ford W. Harris in 1913, but R. H. Wilson, a consultant who applied it extensively, and K. Andler are given credit for their in-depth analysis.[1]

Overview[edit]

EOQ applies only when demand for a product is constant over the year and each new order is delivered in full when inventory reaches zero. There is a fixed cost for each order placed, regardless of the number of units ordered; an order is assumed to contain only 1 unit. There is also a cost for each unit held in storage, commonly known as holding cost, sometimes expressed as a percentage of the purchase cost of the item. While the EOQ formulation is straightforward there are factors such as transportation rates and quantity discounts to consider in actual application.

We want to determine the optimal number of units to order so that we minimize the total cost associated with the purchase, delivery, and storage of the product.

The required parameters to the solution are the total demand for the year, the purchase cost for each item, the fixed cost to place the order for a single item and the storage cost for each item per year. Note that the number of times an order is placed will also affect the total cost, though this number can be determined from the other parameters.

Variables[edit]

The total cost function and derivation of EOQ formula[edit]

The single-item EOQ formula finds the minimum point of the following cost function:

Total Cost = purchase cost or production cost + ordering cost + holding cost

Where:

  • Purchase cost: This is the variable cost of goods: purchase unit price × annual demand quantity. This is P × D
  • Ordering cost: This is the cost of placing orders: each order has a fixed cost K, and we need to order D/Q times per year. This is K × D/Q
  • Holding cost: the average quantity in stock (between fully replenished and empty) is Q/2, so this cost is h × Q/2
.

To determine the minimum point of the total cost curve, calculate the derivative of the total cost with respect to Q (assume all other variables are constant) and set it equal to 0:

Which is true about the economic order quantity?

Solving for Q gives Q* (the optimal order quantity):

Therefore:

Economic Order Quantity

Q* is independent of P; it is a function of only K, D, h.

The optimal value Q* may also be found by recognizing that

where the non-negative quadratic term disappears for which provides the cost minimum

Example[edit]

  • annual requirement quantity (D) = 10000 units
  • Cost per order (K) = 40
  • Cost per unit (P)= 50
  • Yearly carrying cost per unit = 4
  • Market interest = 2%

Economic order quantity = = 400 units

Number of orders per year (based on EOQ)

Total cost

Total cost

If we check the total cost for any order quantity other than 400(=EOQ), we will see that the cost is higher. For instance, supposing 500 units per order, then

Total cost

Similarly, if we choose 300 for the order quantity, then

Total cost

This illustrates that the economic order quantity is always in the best interests of the firm.

Extensions of the EOQ model[edit]

Quantity discounts[edit]

An important extension to the EOQ model is to accommodate quantity discounts. There are two main types of quantity discounts: (1) all-units and (2) incremental.[2][3] Here is a numerical example:

  • Incremental unit discount: Units 1–100 cost $30 each; Units 101–199 cost $28 each; Units 200 and up cost $26 each. So when 150 units are ordered, the total cost is $30*100 + $28*50.
  • All units discount: an order of 1–1000 units costs $50 each; an order of 1001–5000 units costs $45 each; an order of more than 5000 units costs $40 each. So when 1500 units are ordered, the total cost is $45*1500.

In order to find the optimal order quantity under different quantity discount schemes, one should use algorithms; these algorithms are developed under the assumption that the EOQ policy is still optimal with quantity discounts. Perera et al. (2017)[4] establish this optimality and fully characterize the (s,S) optimality within the EOQ setting under general cost structures.

Design of optimal quantity discount schedules[edit]

In presence of a strategic customer, who responds optimally to discount schedules, the design of an optimal quantity discount scheme by the supplier is complex and has to be done carefully. This is particularly so when the demand at the customer is itself uncertain. An interesting effect called the "reverse bullwhip" takes place where an increase in consumer demand uncertainty actually reduces order quantity uncertainty at the supplier.[5]

Backordering costs and multiple items[edit]

Several extensions can be made to the EOQ model, including backordering costs[6] and multiple items. In the case backorders are permitted, the inventory carrying costs per cycle are:[7]

where s is the number of backorders when order quantity Q is delivered and is the rate of demand. The backorder cost per cycle is:

where and are backorder costs, , T being the cycle length and . The average annual variable cost is the sum of order costs, holding inventory costs and backorder costs:

To minimize impose the partial derivatives equal to zero:

Substituting the second equation into the first gives the following quadratic equation:

If either s=0 or is optimal. In the first case the optimal lot is given by the classic EOQ formula, in the second case an order is never placed and minimum yearly cost is given by . If or is optimal, if then there shouldn't be any inventory system. If solving the preceding quadratic equation yields:

If there are backorders the reorder point is: ; with m being the largest integer and μ the lead time demand.

Additionally, the economic order interval[8] can be determined from the EOQ and the economic production quantity model (which determines the optimal production quantity) can be determined in a similar fashion.

A version of the model, the Baumol-Tobin model, has also been used to determine the money demand function, where a person's holdings of money balances can be seen in a way parallel to a firm's holdings of inventory.[9]

Malakooti (2013)[10] has introduced the multi-criteria EOQ models where the criteria could be minimizing the total cost, Order quantity (inventory), and Shortages.

A version taking the time-value of money into account was developed by Trippi and Lewin.[11]

Imperfect quality[edit]

Another important extension of the EOQ model is to consider items with imperfect quality. Salameh and Jaber (2000) are the first to study the imperfect items in an EOQ model very thoroughly. They consider an inventory problem in which the demand is deterministic and there is a fraction of imperfect items in the lot and are screened by the buyer and sold by them at the end of the circle at discount price.[12]

See also[edit]

  • Reorder point
  • Safety stock
  • Constant fill rate for the part being produced: Economic production quantity
  • Orders placed at regular intervals: Fixed time period model
  • Demand is random: classical Newsvendor model
  • Demand varies over time: Dynamic lot size model
  • Several products produced on the same machine: Economic lot scheduling problem
  • Renewal Demand and (s, S) Optimality by Perera, Janakiraman, and Niu [1]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Hax, AC; Candea, D. (1984), Production and Operations Management, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, p. 135, ISBN 9780137248803
  2. ^ Nahmias, Steven (2005). Production and operations analysis. McGraw Hill Higher Education.[page needed]
  3. ^ Zipkin, Paul H, Foundations of Inventory Management, McGraw Hill 2000[page needed]
  4. ^ Perera, Sandun; Janakiraman, Ganesh; Niu, Shun-Chen (2017). "Optimality of (s,S) policies in EOQ models with general cost structures". International Journal of Production Economics. 187: 216–228. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.09.017.
  5. ^ Altintas, Nihat; Erhun, Feryal; Tayur, Sridhar (2008). "Quantity Discounts Under Demand Uncertainty". Management Science. 54 (4): 777–92. doi:10.1287/mnsc.1070.0829. JSTOR 20122426.
  6. ^ Perera, Sandun; Janakiraman, Ganesh; Niu, Shun-Chen (2017). "Optimality of (s,S) policies in EOQ models with general cost structures". International Journal of Production Economics. 187: 216–228. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.09.017.
  7. ^ T. Whitin, G. Hadley, Analysis of Inventory Systems, Prentice Hall 1963
  8. ^ Goyal, S.K. (1987). "A simple heuristic method for determining economic order interval for linear demand". Engineering Costs and Production Economics. 11: 53–57. doi:10.1016/0167-188X(87)90025-5.
  9. ^ Caplin, Andrew; Leahy, John (2010). "Economic Theory and the World of Practice: A Celebration of the (s, S) Model". The Journal of Economic Perspectives. 24 (1): 183–201. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.730.8784. doi:10.1257/jep.24.1.183. JSTOR 25703488.
  10. ^ Malakooti, B (2013). Operations and Production Systems with Multiple Objectives. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-58537-5.[page needed]
  11. ^ Trippi, Robert R.; Lewin, Donald E. (1974). "A Present Value Formulation of the Classical Eoq Problem". Decision Sciences. 5 (1): 30–35. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1974.tb00592.x.
  12. ^ Salameh, M.K.; Jaber, M.Y. (March 2000). "Economic production quantity model for items with imperfect quality". International Journal of Production Economics. 64 (1–3): 59–64. doi:10.1016/s0925-5273(99)00044-4. ISSN 0925-5273.

Further reading[edit]

  • Harris, Ford W. Operations Cost (Factory Management Series), Chicago: Shaw (1915)
  • Harris, Ford W. (1913). "How many parts to make at once". Factory, the Magazine of Management. 10: 135–136, 152.
  • Camp, W. E. "Determining the production order quantity", Management Engineering, 1922
  • Wilson, R. H. (1934). "A Scientific Routine for Stock Control". Harvard Business Review. 13: 116–28.
  • Plossel, George. Orlicky's Material Requirement's Planning. Second Edition. McGraw Hill. 1984. (first edition 1975)
  • Erlenkotter, Donald (2014). "Ford Whitman Harris's economical lot size model". International Journal of Production Economics. 155: 12–15. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2013.12.008.
  • Perera, Sandun; Janakiraman, Ganesh; Niu, Shun-Chen (2017). "Optimality of (s,S) policies in EOQ models with general cost structures". International Journal of Production Economics. 187: 216–228. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.09.017.
  • Perera, Sandun; Janakiraman, Ganesh; Niu, Shun-Chen (2018). "Optimality of (s, S) Inventory Policies under Renewal Demand and General Cost Structures". Production and Operations Management. 27 (2): 368–383. doi:10.1111/poms.12795. hdl:2027.42/142450.
  • Tsan-Ming Choi (Ed.) Handbook of EOQ Inventory Problems: Stochastic and Deterministic Models and Applications, Springer's International Series in Operations Research and Management Science, 2014. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-7639-9.
  • Ventura, Robert; Samuel, Stephen (2016). "Optimization of fuel injection in GDI engine using economic order quantity and Lambert W function". Applied Thermal Engineering. 101: 112–20. doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.02.024.
  • The EOQ Model
  • http://www.inventoryops.com/economic_order_quantity.htm
  • http://www.scmfocus.com/supplyplanning/2014/04/10/economic-order-quantity-calculator/

Which of the following statements about EOQ is true?

The correct answer is b. An increase in demand will increase the EOQ.

What is example of economic order quantity?

Example of Economic Order Quantity The shop sells 1,000 shirts each year. It costs the company $5 per year to hold a single shirt in inventory, and the fixed cost to place an order is $2. The EOQ formula is the square root of (2 x 1,000 shirts x $2 order cost) / ($5 holding cost), or 28.3 with rounding.

What is economic order quantity?

Economic order quantity is a metric that represents the ideal order size to minimize costs for the business. Economic order quantity is a useful formula for businesses of all sizes and types that order and hold inventory.