Service rate optimization in inventory-production systems with time-varying and incomplete deterministic demand

A specific class of production systems is considered in this paper with the aim of minimizing inventory and production costs, over a finite horizon. In such a class of systems, all processes (arrival and departure of parts, production, demand to be satisfied) are modelled as piece-wise constant functions that change their values at asynchronous time instants. The decision variables are the constant rate at which raw parts enter the system and the service rate at the various time instants. In the paper, both the case of completely known demand and that of incomplete demand is taken into account. In both cases, a solution algorithm is provided in order to determine the optimal (or sub-optimal, in case of incomplete demand) solution of the optimization problem.