LineFlow: A Framework to Learn Active Control of Production Lines

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Müller, Kai, Wenzel, Martin, Windisch, Tobias
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Müller, Kai
Wenzel, Martin
Windisch, Tobias
author_facet Müller, Kai
Wenzel, Martin
Windisch, Tobias
contents Many production lines require active control mechanisms, such as adaptive routing, worker reallocation, and rescheduling, to maintain optimal performance. However, designing these control systems is challenging for various reasons, and while reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise in addressing these challenges, a standardized and general framework is still lacking. In this work, we introduce LineFlow, an extensible, open-source Python framework for simulating production lines of arbitrary complexity and training RL agents to control them. To demonstrate the capabilities and to validate the underlying theoretical assumptions of LineFlow, we formulate core subproblems of active line control in ways that facilitate mathematical analysis. For each problem, we provide optimal solutions for comparison. We benchmark state-of-the-art RL algorithms and show that the learned policies approach optimal performance in well-understood scenarios. However, for more complex, industrial-scale production lines, RL still faces significant challenges, highlighting the need for further research in areas such as reward shaping, curriculum learning, and hierarchical control.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_06744
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LineFlow: A Framework to Learn Active Control of Production Lines
Müller, Kai
Wenzel, Martin
Windisch, Tobias
Machine Learning
Many production lines require active control mechanisms, such as adaptive routing, worker reallocation, and rescheduling, to maintain optimal performance. However, designing these control systems is challenging for various reasons, and while reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise in addressing these challenges, a standardized and general framework is still lacking. In this work, we introduce LineFlow, an extensible, open-source Python framework for simulating production lines of arbitrary complexity and training RL agents to control them. To demonstrate the capabilities and to validate the underlying theoretical assumptions of LineFlow, we formulate core subproblems of active line control in ways that facilitate mathematical analysis. For each problem, we provide optimal solutions for comparison. We benchmark state-of-the-art RL algorithms and show that the learned policies approach optimal performance in well-understood scenarios. However, for more complex, industrial-scale production lines, RL still faces significant challenges, highlighting the need for further research in areas such as reward shaping, curriculum learning, and hierarchical control.
title LineFlow: A Framework to Learn Active Control of Production Lines
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06744