Methods of Establishing Safety Stock Levels

A method for handling a plurality of heuristics to establish safety stock limits using a genetic algorithm, comprising:

• generating a first product genome from a population of products;
• identifying a safety stock objective;
• identifying at least first and second products associated with the safety stock objective;
• assigning a product heuristic byte that defines product heuristics that can be applied to each of the first and second products in the first product genome;
• assigning a first product heuristic to the first product and a second product heuristic to a second product that defines at least one inventory policy from the product heuristics to each of the first product and the second product at random;
• applying each product heuristic associated with each of the first product and the second product;
• establishing safety stock limits based on an overall effect of the product heuristics applied to the each of the first product and the second product;
• and
• determining whether the safety stock limits achieve the safety stock objective.