Decentralized manufacturing management by a multi-agent optimal control method

A supply chain management system is defined as communications among suppliers, plants, distribution centres, retailers and demand stimulus. These systems are large scale and multi-agent, and therefore a decentralized control method must be used. Also, demand forecasting, as a challenge in production management, can be estimated by advanced methods or modelled using demand forecasting functions. In this paper, a new decentralized receding horizon control method is used to achieve customer contentment and low-cost inventory in a complete chain of supply, manufacture, assembly, warehouse, distribution and retail units. The main novelty of the method returns to the use of both the move suppression term and the look-ahead idea to increase robustness and smoothness in a supply chain containing assembly units. Also, a Kalman filter estimator is applied to estimate states and output variables. For this purpose, a suitable model and appropriate optimal control method are developed. Finally, the efficiency is indicated regarding simulation results.