n this paper the Brunovsky canonical form is used to synthesize piecewise-constant control policies for a class of production-inventory systems which consist of a set of production-inventory sub-systems connected in cascade. It is shown that each production-inventory sub-system can be controlled in isolation but that control policies based on this approach lead to undesirable transient behaviour. The alternative approach whereby the control policies are formulated for the composite system leads to improved transient behaviour.