Dynamic modeling and classical control theory for supply chain management

This study proposes a novel dynamic approach for supply chain management based on the development of a dynamic framework to model supply chains, and on the application of ideas from process dynamics and control to manage it. This novel framework models the flow of information and material within the supply chain, and uses them to capture its dynamic behavior. Moreover, the use of ideas from dynamics and control allows the design of systematic decision-making processes for the supply chain as if they were control laws for a dynamic system. The study tests several heuristic control laws for the model and analyzes their impact on the behavior of the supply chain. The result is the reproduction of interesting trade offs found in real systems, which give valuable insights for the future direction of this research towards finding a near optimal decision-making process for a supply chain. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.