Testbed for modeling and inventory regulation of dynamic supply chains

There exist several ways to model supply chain systems, from discrete models to stochastic ones. Among them there is a modeling approach based on traffic flow theory which considers inventory levels and material flows. The resulting models are linear, although they are subject to constraints such as maximum production rates, as well as non negative inventory values and material flows. These constraints must be taken into account when designing a control strategy. In previous works of the authors a bounded PI control for inventory level regulation was introduced. The closed loop system was therefore a non liner one, due to the control boundaries. A stability analysis of the closed loop system based on linearization techniques was performed resulting in sufficient conditions for local asymptotic stability. Besides the theoretical framework the work was supported by numerical simulations on a petrochemical plant. In this work a testbed platform form by water tanks is developed. The systems allows applying the proposed modeling and control techniques, such that the experimental results agree with the simulated ones.