In this paper, the authors propose a new approach to control a barge type surface vessel. It is based on the Dynamic Positioning System(DPS) design. The main role of barge ship is to carry and supply the materials to the floating units and other places. To carry out this job, it should be positioned in the specified area. However sometimes the thrust systems are installed on it, and in general the rope control by mooring winch system is used. It may be difficult to compare the control performances of two types. If we consider this problem in point of usefulness, we can easily find out that the winch control system is more useful and applicable to the real field than the thrust control system except a special use. Therefore, in this paper we consider a DPS design problem which can be extended to the many application fields. The goal of this paper is twofold. First, the sliding mode controller (SMC) for positioning the our vessel is proposed. Especially, in this paper, a robust stability condition is given based on descriptor system representation. In the result, the sliding mode control law guarantees to keep the vessel in the defined area in the presence of environmental disturbances. And second, the thrust allocation problem is solved by using redistributed pseudo-inverse (RPI) algorithm to determine the thrust force and direction of each individual actuator. The proposed approach has been simulated with a supply vessel model and found work well.