Abstract
This paper presents an approximate method to calculate the expected lost sales for a reorder level system of inventory control in which both the demand per unit time and the lead time are gamma distributed with integer modulus. Laplace transforms are used to determine the first four moments of the probability density function (p.d.f.) of demand over lead time. A gamma fit approximation of this p.d.f. is obtained and shown to be quite accurate for a large number of cases. This approximation allows the calculation of expected lost sales to be a simple task.

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