Inventory Control

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Overview

Inventory control decides when and where to replenish or allocate goods when demand, lead times, shelf life, and shared capacity are uncertain. Methods range from base-stock rules and stochastic or robust optimization to contextual learning, censored-demand estimation, and reinforcement learning, including neural policies that enforce hard constraints. Work evaluates decisions by operational outcomes such as inventory cost, fill rate, and stockouts across retail, pharmaceutical, warehouse, and multi-echelon settings—not just forecast accuracy. A central tension is learning from incomplete sales data while providing reliable guarantees, and balancing scalable adaptive policies with transparency and dependable performance under shifts in demand.

Latest papers

CardsList

34 papers2 papers in the last four weeks, down 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. AutoVend: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Long-Horizon Autonomous Vending Operations

    Oct 27, 2026Qiming Shi, Yikun Li, Beidi Luan +5Long-Horizon LLM AgentsLLM Agent Evaluation

    StepFun · Zhejiang University · Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University +1

  2. A Dynamic Inventory Rationing Model for Last-Mile Delivery of Medication in Liberia's Community Health Program

    Oct 23, 2026Baris Ata, Yufan Chen, Robert MontgomeryInventory ControlSupply Chain Optimization

    Booth School of Business, University of Chicago · Rady School of Management, University of California San Diego

  3. Towards Optimal Inventory Control under Censored Demand: A Biased Sample-Average Approximation Approach

    Sep 30, 2026Yuxuan Han, Xiaoyu Fan, Jiawei Zhang +1Inventory ControlLearning with Missing Data

    Stern School of Business, New York University

  4. Proximal Residual Value Functions for Consistent Planning and Real-Time Execution

    Sep 19, 2026Harrison Waldon, Carson Eisenach, Akhil Bagaria +4Value Function EstimationReinforcement Learning

    Amazon SCOT

  5. Accuracy Is Not Service: A Decision-Aware Benchmark for Intermittent-Demand Forecasting

    Sep 12, 2026Joo Ern Chin, Shih-Fen Cheng, Aldy GunawanTime Series ForecastingForecasting Benchmarks

    School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University 80 Stamford Road, Singapore 178902 · ST Logistics Pte. Ltd. 5 Clementi Loop, Singapore 129816

  6. Automated Design of Inventory Policy with Large Language Models: An Exploratory Study

    Sep 8, 2026Fenghua Yang, Preet Baxi, Yi Zhang +4Inventory ControlLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA · Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA · Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada +2

  7. OR-Transformer: Scaling Real-Time Decision-Making to 1,000 Items

    Sep 1, 2026Shuze Daniel Liu, David Simchi-Levi, Claire Chen +2Inventory ControlTransformer

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Purdue University · California Institute of Technology +1

  8. Variable Selection for Feature-Based Newsvendor

    Sep 1, 2026Zhaoliang Yuan, Jie WangInventory ControlConstrained Optimization

    School of Artificial Intelligence, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · School of Artificial Intelligence and School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

  9. Nonparametric Contextual Pricing and Inventory Learning under Censored Demand

    Aug 31, 2026Zean Han, Jing Liang, Ruihan Lin +2Inventory ControlLearning with Missing Data

    Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

  10. LLMs Can Design Near-Optimal OR Algorithms

    Aug 27, 2026Jackie BaekInventory ControlAutomated Algorithm Discovery

    Stern School of Business, New York University

  11. Supply Chain Analytics: A Data-Driven Approach

    Aug 17, 2026Elioth SanabriaSupply Chain ManagementData-Driven Control

  12. Resource-Adaptive Primal-Dual Learning for One-Warehouse Multi-Store Systems with Censored Demand

    Aug 14, 2026Jiameng LyuInventory ControlOnline Resource Allocation

    Department of Management Science, School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China

  13. Hard Constraints, Smooth Gradients: Learning Feasible Inventory Policies via Differentiable Projection

    Aug 3, 2026Patrick Helm, Jan-Niklas Doerr, Joren Gijsbrechts +1Inventory ControlConstrained RL

    TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich · Esade, Ramon Llull University · Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI), Technical University of Munich

  14. SCOPE: Supply-Chain Operations through Coupled Policies for End-to-End Coordination

    Jul 30, 2026Yunhao Liang, Xianqi Cao, Pujun Zhang +4Inventory ControlSupply Chain Management

    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · OptiMax AI, Hong Kong SAR, China · JD.com, China

  15. Large Language Model for Operations Research Formulation Selection in Multi-Warehouse Inventory Allocation

    Jul 28, 2026Jintao Xu, Yingzheng Ma, Jiong Dong +2Inventory ControlLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    Supply Chain Tech Team Y, JD.com, Beijing, China

  16. Contextual Deconvolution for Variance-Stable Demand Sensing: Kernel-Modulated Operators in Promotional Retail

    Jul 28, 2026Mohammad ForouheshInventory ControlTime Series Forecasting

    Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

  17. STOCKTAKE: Measuring the Gap Between Perception and Action in LLM Agents with a Fair Oracle

    Jul 15, 2026Sagar Deb, Ashwanth KrishnanInventory ControlLLM Agent Evaluation

    QpiAI

  18. SupplyNetPy: An Open-Source Python Library for High-Fidelity Modeling and Simulation of Arbitrary Supply Chain and Inventory Networks

    Jul 3, 2026Tushar Lone, Neha KaranjkarInventory ControlSupply Chain Management

    School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology Goa, Ponda, Goa, INDIA

  19. Solver-Verified Formulation Generation and Selection for Multi-Warehouse Inventory Allocation Using Large Language Models

    Jun 28, 2026Jintao Xu, Yingzheng Ma, Jiong Dong +4Integer Linear ProgrammingMixed-Integer Linear Programming

    Supply Chain Tech Team Y, JD.com

  20. SkillChain-Gym: A Benchmark for Reskilling-Aware Production-Inventory Control under Disruptions

    Jun 15, 2026Carlos Eduardo SanojaInventory Control

    Professor, FCEA, Universidad Monte´avila Edificio Lomas del Sol, Calle Humboldt, Lomas del Sol, Caracas, Venezuela · Quanta Labs, LLC

  21. Optimal Hidden-Target Learning for Online Inventory Optimization on General Convex Sets

    Jun 12, 2026Anthony Pineci, Yunzong XuInventory ControlOnline Convex Optimization

    UIUC

  22. Learning to replenish: A hybrid deep reinforcement learning for dynamic inventory management in the pharmaceutical supply chains

    Jun 4, 2026Amandeep Kaur, Gyan PrakashInventory ControlActor-Critic Methods

    Department of Management Studies ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Gwalior-474015, Madhya Pradesh, India

  23. Optimal and Order-optimal Gated Priority-based Greedy Policies for Two-layer Multi-item Order Fulfillment

    May 25, 2026Xi Chen, Yuze Chen, Ziyi Chen +1Inventory ControlCompetitive Analysis

    Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA · Qiuzhen College, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China · Yau Mathematical Sciences Center & Department of Mathematical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

  24. In-Context Learning for Data-Driven Censored Inventory Control

    May 14, 2026Sohom Mukherjee, Anh-Duy Pham, Richard Pibernik +1Inventory ControlBandit Convex Optimization

    Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg · National University of Singapore Zaragoza Logistics Center

  25. gym-invmgmt: An Open Benchmarking Framework for Inventory Management Methods

    May 12, 2026Reza Barati, Qinmin Vivian HuInventory ControlRL Benchmarks

    Department of Computer Science Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada

  26. Online Allocation with Unknown Shared Supply

    May 8, 2026Tzeh Yuan Neoh, Davin Choo, Mengchu Yue +1Online Resource AllocationSequential Decision Making

    Harvard University

  27. InvEvolve: Evolving White-Box Inventory Policies via Large Language Models with Performance Guarantees

    May 1, 2026Chenyu Huang, Jianghao Lin, Zhengyang Tang +4Inventory ControlLarge Language Model-Guided Optimization

    1Shanghai University of Finance and Economics · 2Shanghai Jiao Tong University · 3The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen +2

  28. Robust Fleet Sizing for Multi-UAV Inspection Missions under Synchronized Replacement Demand

    Apr 17, 2026Vishal Ramesh, Antony ThomasInventory ControlMulti-Robot Systems

    Robotics Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500032, India

  29. Intertemporal Demand Allocation for Inventory Control in Online Marketplaces

    Apr 8, 2026Rene Caldentey, Tong XieE-CommerceOnline Resource Allocation

    Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637

  30. NFC based inventory control system for secure and efficient communication

    Mar 31, 2026Razi Iqbal, Awais Ahmad, Asfandyar GillaniInventory Control

    Department of Computer Science and IT, Lahore Leads University · Al-Khawarizmi Institute of Computer Science, University of Engineering and Technology