Skill-Constrained Model Predictive Control for Resilient Manufacturing Supply Chains

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 15 Jun 2026] Skill-Constrained Model Predictive Control for Resilient Manufacturing Supply Chains Carlos Eduardo Sanoja In skill-constrained production-inventory systems, the qualified human capacity available tomorrow depends on training decisions made today: production requires certified workers, certifications decay unless maintained, and training consumes the same scarce worker hours that production needs now. We study a closed-loop skill-constrained model predictive controller that, at every shift, solves a finite-horizon mixed-integer program over production, inventory, backlog, and training, with binary predicted certification, hard production eligibility, and an interpretable terminal value that prices certified-capacity gaps at the horizon boundary; only the first-period action is applied before replanning. On synthetic, seed-controlled SkillChain-Gym scenarios - announced and surprise new-skill shocks, demand shocks, absenteeism, forecast- and availability-quality modes, capacity-boundary and training-rate sweeps, and negative controls - we evaluate the controller against production-only and maintenance-only ablations, static cross-training insurance plans, and a strong reactive heuristic, under an ex-ante locked configuration and paired statistics. The result is regime dependence, not superiority: no policy class dominates. Predictive control helps when skill or labor bottlenecks are forecastable early enough for training to complete; lean static insurance remains hard to beat under surprise shocks, near the demand-capacity boundary, and wherever pre-shock slack makes insurance cheap. Attribution ablations separate certification maintenance, re-acquisition of lapsed certifications, and greenfield skill acquisition. Forecastability, not adaptivity per se, decides when predictive control pays. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Systems and Control (eess.SY) Cite as: arXiv:2606.17269 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2606.17269v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.17269 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Carlos Eduardo Sanoja [view email] [v1] Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:23:12 UTC (95 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs cs.SY eess eess.SY References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)