Validating Virtual Safety Stock Effectiveness through Simulation

As a means of avoiding stock-outs, safety stocks play an important role in achieving customer satisfaction and retention. However, traditional safety stock theory is based on the assumption of the immediate delivery of the ordered products, which is not a common condition in business-to-business contexts. Virtual safety stock theory was conceived to raise the service level by exploiting the potential time interval in the order-to-delivery process. Nevertheless, its mathematical complexity prevented this technique from being widely adopted in the industrial world. In this paper, we present a simple method to test virtual safety stock effectiveness through simulation in an inventory system using a base stock policy with periodic reviews and backorders. This approach can be useful for researchers as well as practitioners who want to model the behaviour of an inventory system under uncertain conditions and verify the opportunity for setting up a virtual safety stock on top of, or instead of, the traditional physical safety stock.