Optimization of some dynamic industrial control processes by analog simulation

The analog computer has, for several years, been used to simulate the dynamic behaviour of some electrical systems such as servomechanisms and other control systems. In this paper some dynamic industrial processes are first formulated and solved as an optimal control problem via the Pontryagin's maximum principle. The resulting policy will be either bang-bang or continuous in time depending on whether there is a constraint on the policy or not. Two cases of short-time dynamic industrial processes are considered. One is an inventory control process and the other a production scheduling problem. These processes are both simulated on an analog computer. The results obtained seem to be rather reasonable and predictable in accordance to the actual practice.