Daniel Rivera, Arizona State University
A Process Control Perspective to Managing Production-Inventory Systems: Modeling, Forecasting, and Control
Production-inventory systems are iconic dynamical systems that are meaningful to applications in process settings and beyond. In this talk we focus on the classical single-node production-inventory system, and
survey some recent published work from our laboratory addressing modeling, control, and demand forecasting considerations. A combined feedback-feedforward, three degree-of-freedom (3 DoF) Internal Model Control (IMC) algorithm is presented as useful in understanding fundamental control requirements for this system, but in practice a Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm is required. A standard MPC
solution is contrasted with IMC, which ultimately leads to an improved MPC formulation that mimics the positive attributes of the 3 DoF IMC control system while addressing practical requirements such as
constraint handling. Feedforward compensation of demand forecasts is critical to the performance of the closed-loop system; borrowing from the field of control-relevant identification, an analysis procedure for estimating demand models is presented which relies on sensible prefiltering of the demand data to emphasize the goodness-of-fit in the regions of time and frequency most important for achieving desired
levels of closed-loop performance. The various points of the presentation are illustrated with meaningful examples.