Investigating the Monte-Carlo Tree Search Approach for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Boveroux, Laurie, Ernst, Damien, Louveaux, Quentin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917906605932544
author Boveroux, Laurie
Ernst, Damien
Louveaux, Quentin
author_facet Boveroux, Laurie
Ernst, Damien
Louveaux, Quentin
contents The Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) is a well-known optimization problem in manufacturing, where the goal is to determine the optimal sequence of jobs across different machines to minimize a given objective. In this work, we focus on minimising the weighted sum of job completion times. We explore the potential of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), a heuristic-based reinforcement learning technique, to solve large-scale JSSPs, especially those with recirculation. We propose several Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulations to model the JSSP for the MCTS algorithm. In addition, we introduce a new synthetic benchmark derived from real manufacturing data, which captures the complexity of large, non-rectangular instances often encountered in practice. Our experimental results show that MCTS effectively produces good-quality solutions for large-scale JSSP instances, outperforming our constraint programming approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_17991
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Investigating the Monte-Carlo Tree Search Approach for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem
Boveroux, Laurie
Ernst, Damien
Louveaux, Quentin
Artificial Intelligence
Optimization and Control
F.2.2
The Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) is a well-known optimization problem in manufacturing, where the goal is to determine the optimal sequence of jobs across different machines to minimize a given objective. In this work, we focus on minimising the weighted sum of job completion times. We explore the potential of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), a heuristic-based reinforcement learning technique, to solve large-scale JSSPs, especially those with recirculation. We propose several Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulations to model the JSSP for the MCTS algorithm. In addition, we introduce a new synthetic benchmark derived from real manufacturing data, which captures the complexity of large, non-rectangular instances often encountered in practice. Our experimental results show that MCTS effectively produces good-quality solutions for large-scale JSSP instances, outperforming our constraint programming approach.
title Investigating the Monte-Carlo Tree Search Approach for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem
topic Artificial Intelligence
Optimization and Control
F.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17991