Real-time decision support with reinforcement learning for dynamic flowshop scheduling

Placeholder Show Content

Abstract/Contents

Abstract
The dynamic flowshop scheduling problem has attracted a lot of attention from both academia and industry because of its nature of NP-hardness in computation on the one hand, and its great value for optimization of manufacturing systems on the other. Traditionally, effective heuristic methods have been widely adopted in the industry to solve this problem. In recent years, machine learning has also exhibited great potential in the field. In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learning approach to this problem. We discuss settings for orders, performance measurements, and learning methods in detail to construct a controlled environment for this research. We then establish a manufacturing simulation system to compare the performance of the reinforcement learning approach and three heuristic approaches. While the experimental results revealed the superiority of the reinforcement learning method, investigations into dispatching decisions exposed its limitations in actual industry applications. Hence, two strategies were designed and employed to improve the reinforcement learning approach. After validating the reinforcement learning method with the improved strategies, we summarized and presented the dispatching rules of the reinforcement learning method as one type of complementary decision for supporting real-time flowshop scheduling problems.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic; electronic resource; remote
Extent 1 online resource.
Publication date 2017
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Associated with Wang, Jinzhi
Associated with Stanford University, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department
Advisor Leckie, Jim, 1939-
Thesis advisor Leckie, Jim, 1939-

Subjects

Genre Theses

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Jinzhi Wang.
Note Submitted to the Department of Environmental Engineering and Science.
Thesis Thesis (Engineering)--Stanford University, 2017.
Location electronic resource

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2017 by Jinzhi Wang
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Also listed in

Loading usage metrics...