John S. Baras

2012

Flow Control in Time-Varying, Random Supply Chains

Ion Matei, Assane Gueye and John S. Baras

To appear in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review.

Abstract

Today’s supply chains are increasingly complex and globalized. They depend on a network of independent, yet interconnected moving parts. They rely on critical infrastructures and exhibit time variability and randomness. Therefore new design strategies that deal with changing supply chains are necessary. This paper focuses on the supply chain logistics aspect of supply chain management.We propose a randomized flow control algorithm for a time varying, random, supply chain network. We formulate a constrained stochastic optimization problem that maximizes the profit function in terms of the long-run, time-average rates of the flows in the supply chain. We propose an online and distributed algorithm that is based on queueing theory and stochastic analysis concepts. We show that the solution provided by our algorithm can get arbitrarily close to the solution of the aforementioned optimization problem. In addition, in support of the theoretical results, we present numerical simulations as well.

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