Discrete Optimal Control of Production Plans

This discussion demonstrates the application of discrete optimal control theory to production planning problems. In particular we show that most of the previous models which have appeared in the literature on production planning (scheduling, smoothing and work force balancing) can be characterized as special cases of the control theory problem formulation. This more general model relaxes a number of the assumptions required by other formulations in capturing a wide spectrum of production planning policies. Computational aspects of the control theory approach are discussed and solution results included for numerical examples.