Minimum settling-time control policies for cascaded production-inventory systems

In this paper, the technique of entire eigenstructure assignment is used to derive minimum settling-time control policies for a class of production—inventory systems which can be described by linear multivariate discrete-time state equations. It is shown that this technique can be readily used to derive minimum settling-time control policies for production-inventory systems which consist of a set of production-inventory sub-systems connected in cascade. The advantage obtained by using control policies derived in this way, compared with control policies derived by consideration of each sub-system in isolation, is clearly demonstrated.