Optimal control of a class of hybrid systems

We present a modeling framework for hybrid systems intended to capture the interaction of event-driven and time-driven dynamics. This is motivated by the structure of many manufacturing environments where discrete entities (termed jobs) are processed through a network of workcenters so as to change their physical characteristics. Associated with each job is a temporal state subject to event-driven dynamics and a physical state subject to time-driven dynamics. Based on this framework, we formulate and analyze a class of optimal control problems for single-stage processes. First-order optimality conditions are derived and several properties of optimal state trajectories (sample paths) are identified which significantly simplify the task of obtaining explicit optimal control policies.