Learning Memory-Enhanced Improvement Heuristics for Flexible Job Shop Scheduling

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Jiaqi, Cao, Zhiguang, Zhao, Peng, Cao, Rui, Xiao, Yubin, Jiang, Yuan, Zhou, You
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Wang, Jiaqi
Cao, Zhiguang
Zhao, Peng
Cao, Rui
Xiao, Yubin
Jiang, Yuan
Zhou, You
author_facet Wang, Jiaqi
Cao, Zhiguang
Zhao, Peng
Cao, Rui
Xiao, Yubin
Jiang, Yuan
Zhou, You
contents The rise of smart manufacturing under Industry 4.0 introduces mass customization and dynamic production, demanding more advanced and flexible scheduling techniques. The flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) has attracted significant attention due to its complex constraints and strong alignment with real-world production scenarios. Current deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approaches to FJSP predominantly employ constructive methods. While effective, they often fall short of reaching (near-)optimal solutions. In contrast, improvement-based methods iteratively explore the neighborhood of initial solutions and are more effective in approaching optimality. However, the flexible machine allocation in FJSP poses significant challenges to the application of this framework, including accurate state representation, effective policy learning, and efficient search strategies. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a Memory-enhanced Improvement Search framework with heterogeneous graph representation--MIStar. It employs a novel heterogeneous disjunctive graph that explicitly models the operation sequences on machines to accurately represent scheduling solutions. Moreover, a memoryenhanced heterogeneous graph neural network (MHGNN) is designed for feature extraction, leveraging historical trajectories to enhance the decision-making capability of the policy network. Finally, a parallel greedy search strategy is adopted to explore the solution space, enabling superior solutions with fewer iterations. Extensive experiments on synthetic data and public benchmarks demonstrate that MIStar significantly outperforms both traditional handcrafted improvement heuristics and state-of-the-art DRL-based constructive methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_02846
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Memory-Enhanced Improvement Heuristics for Flexible Job Shop Scheduling
Wang, Jiaqi
Cao, Zhiguang
Zhao, Peng
Cao, Rui
Xiao, Yubin
Jiang, Yuan
Zhou, You
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
The rise of smart manufacturing under Industry 4.0 introduces mass customization and dynamic production, demanding more advanced and flexible scheduling techniques. The flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) has attracted significant attention due to its complex constraints and strong alignment with real-world production scenarios. Current deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approaches to FJSP predominantly employ constructive methods. While effective, they often fall short of reaching (near-)optimal solutions. In contrast, improvement-based methods iteratively explore the neighborhood of initial solutions and are more effective in approaching optimality. However, the flexible machine allocation in FJSP poses significant challenges to the application of this framework, including accurate state representation, effective policy learning, and efficient search strategies. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a Memory-enhanced Improvement Search framework with heterogeneous graph representation--MIStar. It employs a novel heterogeneous disjunctive graph that explicitly models the operation sequences on machines to accurately represent scheduling solutions. Moreover, a memoryenhanced heterogeneous graph neural network (MHGNN) is designed for feature extraction, leveraging historical trajectories to enhance the decision-making capability of the policy network. Finally, a parallel greedy search strategy is adopted to explore the solution space, enabling superior solutions with fewer iterations. Extensive experiments on synthetic data and public benchmarks demonstrate that MIStar significantly outperforms both traditional handcrafted improvement heuristics and state-of-the-art DRL-based constructive methods.
title Learning Memory-Enhanced Improvement Heuristics for Flexible Job Shop Scheduling
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02846