H-infinity control of a Supply Chain model

A H_infin control approach has been developed in this paper for a simple supply chain model, linearized about typical operative conditions, and fed with an exogenous and unknown demand. The considered approach has been compared with other emerging control techniques in terms of a performance index defined on the inventory levels in the supply chain, showing a good performance when the exogenous demand presents significant low frequency components. Robustness issues, regarding the knowledge of the production and transport delays in the chain, are considered in the paper, and a properly modified H_infin technique is proposed to deal with uncertain and/or time varying delays