Sliding Mode Dead-Beat Control of Perishable Inventory Systems With Multiple Suppliers

• Published in: IEEE transactions on automation science and engineering Vol. 9; no. 2; pp. 418 - 423
• Main Authors: Ignaciuk, P., Bartoszewicz, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ IEEE 01.04.2012; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Aerospace electronics; Applied sciences; Companies; Computer science; control theory; systems; Control systems; Control theory. Systems; Delay; Design engineering; Equations; Exact sciences and technology; History; Inventory control; Inventory control, production control. Distribution; Mathematical model; Modelling and identification; Operational research and scientific management; Operational research. Management science; Order processing; Perishable goods; sliding mode control; Suppliers; Vectors; Costs; Formal method; Probabilistic approach; Variable structure control; Refeeding; Sliding mode; sliding mode control; Optimal policy; Dead beat control; Exponential decay; Lead time; Perishable item; Virtual memory; Replenishment; Multiplicity; Discrete time; Setup time; Inventory control; Reduced order systems; Heuristic approach; Multiple supplier; Shared memory; Service quality
• ISSN: 1545-5955; 1558-3783
• DOI: 10.1109/TASE.2012.2186633

In this paper, we apply control-theoretic approach to the design of inventory policy for systems with perishable goods. In the considered systems, the stock used to fulfill unknown, variable demand is subject to exponential decay. It is replenished from multiple supply sources characterized by different lead times. The challenge is to achieve high demand satisfaction with minimum costs when replenishment orders are realized with non-negligible delay. In contrast to the classical stochastic, or heuristic approaches, a formal design methodology based on discrete time sliding mode (DSM) control is employed. The proposed DSM controller with the sliding plane selected for a dead-beat scheme ensures full demand satisfaction for arbitrary bounded demand. It achieves a given service level with smaller holding costs and reduced order-to-demand variance ratio as compared to the classical order-up-to policy.