Within a hierarchical decision chain, a major part of problems is dependent on the time component and strongly sensitive to endogenous and exogenous components. These problems can be related to an important class of stochastic optimal control. Difficulties to provide a closed-loop policy for them, lead to look for sub-optimal alternatives. In this paper, four different sub-optimal procedures are investigated in relation to their structural properties. A case study, based on an aggregated production planning problem, is considered with the purpose of comparing the different procedures. The best one is used to provide managerial scenarios about the future use of material resources of the firm.
optimal control; dynamic systems; sub-optimal procedures; dynamic programming; production planning
