Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches are becoming increasingly popular in the field of combinatorial optimization problems due to their ability to learn and adapt in unknown environments for decision-making problems. In this paper, we propose an RL agent based on the Q-Learning method to address Blocking Job Shop Scheduling (BJSS). This latter can be used to represent many manufacturing and real-world situations by handling storage-capacity constraints. To evaluate the performance of RL, we first model the BJSS problem as an alternative graph and map it to a Markov decision process. Our adapted Q-learning is based on three reward functions and two action selection methods. The results have shown that the Q-Learning method is capable of finding feasible solutions to complex BJSS problems while also learning effective selection strategies for minimizing Makespan. This is the first time a Reinforcement Learning approach has been used to tackle the BJSS problem. It presents a good opportunity for further research and the development of more advanced methods.

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Adapted Q-Learning for the Blocking Job Shop Scheduling Problem

  • Karima Rihane,
  • Adel Dabah,
  • Abdelhakim AitZai

摘要

Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches are becoming increasingly popular in the field of combinatorial optimization problems due to their ability to learn and adapt in unknown environments for decision-making problems. In this paper, we propose an RL agent based on the Q-Learning method to address Blocking Job Shop Scheduling (BJSS). This latter can be used to represent many manufacturing and real-world situations by handling storage-capacity constraints. To evaluate the performance of RL, we first model the BJSS problem as an alternative graph and map it to a Markov decision process. Our adapted Q-learning is based on three reward functions and two action selection methods. The results have shown that the Q-Learning method is capable of finding feasible solutions to complex BJSS problems while also learning effective selection strategies for minimizing Makespan. This is the first time a Reinforcement Learning approach has been used to tackle the BJSS problem. It presents a good opportunity for further research and the development of more advanced methods.