e INVENTORY ANALYTICS

The end method schedules an EndOfCustomerService event if the queue is empty, otherwise it increments the number of customers in the queue. [...] Let the initial state of the system at the beginning of the first period be s, the goal is to determine fn(s). [...] Given the current state s and the current action a in period t, we know with certainty the cost during the current stage and — thanks to the state transition function gt — the future state towards which the system transitions. [...] In practice, however, even if we know the state of the system at the beginning of the current stage as well as the decision taken, the state of the system at the beginning of the next stage and the current period reward are often random variables that can only be observed at the end of the current stage. [...] Listing 78 The Memoize class; memo- Let the initial state of the system at the beginning of the first period ization is a technique for storing the be s, once more the goal is to determine f (s).