A century of the EOQ

Abstract

When Ford W. Harris published his short three-page article developing the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model in 1913, he likely did not foresee that it would still be discussed and used 100 years later. Harris’ EOQ model was one of the first applications of mathematical modeling to guide managers in making business decisions, and it has spawned thousands of related studies over the past century that have built on its major foundations and insights. In this chapter we present a short history of the EOQ model by discussing the model itself, some practical issues about implementing the model, and major extensions to the basic model grouped by the dominant foci of each subsequent decade.