Abstract. A product life cycle is the life span of a product which the period begins with the initial product specification and ends with the withdrawal from the market of both the product and its support. A product's life cycle can be divided into several stages characterized by the revenue generated by the product. This paper investigates the effect of quality cost on inventory control policies in a manufacturing system during the product life cycle which consists of introduction, growth and decline stages. The defective rate is considered as a variable of known proportions. An inventory model in order to minimize the total cost of inventory and integrated with cost of quality is developed. The relevant model is built, solved. Necessary and sufficient conditions for a unique and global optimal solution are derived. An illustrative example is provided and numerically verified. This seems to be the first time where such a inventory model for product life cycle is mathematically treated and numerically verified. The validation of result in this model was coded in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0.

Received: March 18, 2011

AMS Subject Classification: --???--

Key Words and Phrases: inventory, product life cycle, cost of quality, defective items and production and demand

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