| This thesis is divided into two parts: Co-ordinated Supply Chain Model and Optimal Control Problems. The first part of the thesis examines co-ordinated supply chain model. The second part of the thesis consists of four projects examining the applications of optimal control theory and the software MISER3.; Part I. Motivated by a recently developed co-ordination model, the synchronized cycles model, further investigations are carried out to explore the characteristics of the model and some bounds are developed on certain decision variables in order to enhance the synchronized cycles algorithm. Modification to the synchronized cycles model by including vehicle scheduling is considered. By the "synchronization" characteristic, the synchronized cycles model out-performs the independent policy both in shipment and delivery scheduling and total system cost. While many of the past researches emphasized on the co-ordination that minimizes the total system cost in the supply chain system, this research investigates how the demand heterogeneity would affect the performance of the synchronized cycles model. Numerical experiments are carried out to identify conditions of the demand heterogeneity that work well for the synchronized cycles model.; Part II. Four applied optimal control problems are addressed and novel optimal control techniques are developed and applied to solve the computational difficulties encountered in these problems. The optimal control software package, MISER3, is used. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the methods and the results obtained are significant and promising.; The four applications include: (1) Modeling of a supply chain system with Omstein Uhlenbeck demand process (2) The isoperimetric pillar construction problem (3) Modeling of the design of a flexible rotating beam (4) Nonlinear model of quarter-car suspension problem. |
