Integration of control theory and scheduling methods for supply chain management

The supply chain is a system comprising organizations, decision makers, and technology decision policies that is responsible for transforming raw materials into finished products that are delivered to end customers. As expanded upon later in the paper, the supply chain is traditionally characterized by counter-current flows of information and material. Material flows from the raw material suppliers through the production and distribution facilities to the end customers, while information, in the form of demands and orders, flows from the end customers upstream to the suppliers [5, 9]. The decisions for supply chain management can be broadly classified into three categories: strategic, tactical and operational. The strategic decisions are the long term planning decisions that may include, among others, where to locate production facilities and warehouses, and in which technologies to invest. On a medium time range, tactical decisions include selecting supply chain partners such as raw material suppliers, transportation companies, etc. The operational decisions are the short term decisions, which are related to optimally operating the supply chain. These decisions include planning and scheduling in the production facilities, and distribution decisions such as inventory management, ordering and shipping policies, etc. [79, 34]. Shapiro [82] lists the challenges in enlarging the scope of strategic planning in supply chains. Among the listed challenges are integrating manufacturing, purchase and sales decisions, multiperiod analysis and optimizing the overall supply chain profits. Stadtler [85] is an excellent overview paper about advanced planning in supply chains. The au-