On the Application of Servomechanism Theory in the Study of Production Control

The problem of controlling the rate of production of a single product can be stated in terms of servomechanism theory, and the well-developed methods of that theory employed to study the behavior of a control system. This is illustrated for a simple system, and a cost criterion is constructed for evaluating alternative decision rules or constructing an optimal rule. Laplace transform methods are introduced, and some of their elementary uses for studying the stability and steady-state behavior of systems are illustrated.