AbstractA retailer or distributor of finished goods, or the manager of a spare‐parts inventory system, must generally forecast the major portion of demand. A specific customer‐service levelp(fraction of replenishment intervals with no stockout) implies two challenges: achieve the service within a small interval plus or minus, and do so with a minimum‐cost investment in inventory. Thepth fractile of lead‐time demand (LTD) is the reorder point (ROP) for this service measure, and is often approximated by that fractile of a normal distribution. With this procedure, it is easy to set safety stocks for an (s, Q) inventory system. However, Bookbinder and Lordahl [2] and others have identified cases where the normal approximation yields excessive costs and/or lower service than desired. This article employs anorder‐statisticapproach. Using available LTD data, the ROP is simply estimated from one or two of the larger values in the sample. This approach is sufficiently automatic and intuitive for routine implementation in industry, yet is distribution free. The order‐statistic method requires only a small amount of LTD data, and makes no assumptions on the form of the underlying LTD distribution, nor even its parameters μ and ρ. We compare the order‐statistic approach and the normal approximation, first in terms of customer service and then using a model of expected annual cost. Based upon characteristics of the available LTD data, we suggest a procedure to aid a practitioner in choosine between the normal and order‐statistic method. © 1994 Jo