This article presents a novel approach to optimise scheduling and production planning to meet seasonal demand in an industrial process using decaying catalysts, based on its formulation as a multistage mixed-integer optimal control problem (MSMIOCP). Unlike existing methodologies, the MSMIOCP formulation allows to solve this problem as a standard nonlinear optimisation problem without combinatorial optimisation methods, which can be advantageous in providing reliable, robust and efficient solutions. Using this formulation, four case studies of this problem, differing in reaction or deactivation kinetics, are investigated. Two different solution implementations are used, each having their own relative advantages. The first implementation demonstrates a bang-bang behaviour for the linear scheduling controls, consistent with a theoretical analysis, but faces integration problems and does not always produce high quality solutions. The second implementation, while not demonstrating the bang-bang property, always produces high quality solutions and shows the advantages of the MSMIOCP formulation over existing methodologies.

本文提出了一种新的方法来优化调度和生产计划，以满足使用腐烂催化剂的工业过程中的季节性需求，该方法将其公式化为多级混合整数最优控制问题（MSMIOCP）。与现有方法不同，MSMIOCP公式允许在没有组合优化方法的情况下解决作为标准非线性优化问题的问题，这在提供可靠，强大和有效的解决方案方面可能是有利的。使用这种配方，对这个问题的四个案例研究进行了研究，这些案例在反应或失活动力学方面有所不同。使用了两种不同的解决方案实现，每种实现都有各自的相对优势。第一种实现方法演示了线性调度控件的爆炸行为，与理论分析一致，但面临集成问题，并不能始终提供高质量的解决方案。第二种实现虽然未显示出“爆炸式”特性，但始终可以提供高质量的解决方案，并显示出MSMIOCP配方相对于现有方法的优势。