TURNPIKE PROPERTIES FOR A CLASS OF PIECEWISE DETERMINISTIC SYSTEMS ARISING IN MANUFACTURING FLOW CONTROL.

This paper deals with a general class of piecewise deterministic control systems that encompasses FMS flow control models. One uses the Markov renewal decision process formalism to characterize optimal policies via a discrete event dynamic programming approach. A family of control problems with a random stopping time is associated with these optimality conditions. These problems can be reformulated as infinite horizon deterministic control problems. It is then shown how the so-called turnpike property should hold for these deterministic control problems under classical convexity assumptions. These turnpikes have the same generic properties as the attractors obtained via a problem specific approach in FMS flow control models and production planning and are called hedging points in this literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]