Int. J. Production Economics 68 (2000) 59}71 A performance comparison of pull type control mechanisms for multi-stage manufacturing Fikri Karaesmen*, Yves Dallery Laboratoire d+Informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6-CNRS), Universite & Pierre et Marie Curie, 4, place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France Received 2 April 1998; accepted 4 August 1998 Abstract With the emergence of Just-in-Time manufacturing, production control mechanisms that react rapidly to actual occurrences of demand are gaining importance. Several pull type control mechanisms have been proposed to date, but it is usually di$cult to quantify how good these mechanisms are, as well as understanding the structural properties that make them desirable. By using a two stage model and an optimal control framework, we study some of these issues here. Our framework permits quantifying the performance of classical mechanisms such as base stock and kanban and more complex mechanisms such as generalized and extended kanban. We also analyze the tradeo!s between single versus multiple control points and service level constraints on the backorders.  2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Multi-stage production; Production/inventory control; Stochastic scheduling 1. Introduction The emergence of Just-in-Time manufacturing approach has underlined the importance of pro- duction control and coordination mechanisms that react to actual occurrences of demand rather than future demand forecasts. This issue is especially important for manufacturing systems consisting of multiple stages where there is also the additional complexity of coordinating the di!erent stages of production in addition to the e!ort to follow the realizations of demand. Production control mecha- nisms that use the actual occurrences of demand * Corresponding author. #33 1 44 27 75 41. E-mail address: "kri.karaesmen@lip6.fr (F. Karaesmen). rather than future demand forecasts to control the #ow of material are known as pull type control mechanisms. Several control mechanisms have been proposed for pull type manufacturing. How- ever due to the complexity of the problem, it is di$cult to quantify, in terms of cost, the advantages and disadvantages of these existing mechanisms, as well as understanding, in general, the properties of good control mechanisms. In this paper, we attempt to clarify some of these issues using a simple two stage model that admits an exact analysis. Two of the better known pull control mecha- nisms are base stock and kanban (see [1] for example). These mechanisms resolve the trade- o! between unsatis"ed demand and holding costs in di!erent ways. The base stock system was 0925-5273/00/$ } see front matter  2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 2 5 - 5 2 7 3 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 2 4 6 - 1