ON SOME APPLICATIONS OF THE THEORY OF DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING TO LOGISTICS,

In recent years, the study of multi-stage processes has become of greater and greater importance in wider and wider fields. A multi-stage process means a process composed of a sequence of operations in which the outcome of the preceding operations may be used to guide the course of future operations. Two types of operations may be distinguished immediately, those in which the outcome is completely determined, and those in which the outcome is uncertain. To treat these problems in a systematic fashion the theory of dynamic programming has been developed. In the article, some simple, but non-trivial, problems of the kind that plague logisticians are considered in order to illustrate what kinds of problems are amenable to out techniques, what analytic results may be expected, and what computational procedures must be utilized in general. Author