Describing service in independent demand inventory systems

We discuss the notion of service in independent demand inventory systems with random demand, and note several areas where existing pedagogy can be improved. We survey a collection of 23 operations management textbooks and recommend that different treatments be made. Specifically we recommend that the concept of Cycle Service, sometimes referred to as Type I Service should be abandoned as it is typically treated in operations management textbooks. We also recommend making a fundamental change in the way that periodic review systems are depicted. The recommendations are made on the basis of general concepts of the notion of customer service and on the basis of long-standing theoretical results from the field of mathematical inventory theory.