A Feedback Control Strategy for a Multi-Product Manufacturing System

A single facility that can produce only one part-type at a time is to be controlled to produce N part-types subject to a known demand rate for each part-type. The dynamics of facility operation are described in terms of continuous-valued variables representing the input buffer contents and the output production errors and in terms of a discrete-valued variables representing particular part-producing states. A feedback controller strategy is derived using phase-plane projections of the facility state space.