Dynamic resource matching in manufacturing using deep reinforcement learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Panda, Saunak Kumar, Xiang, Yisha, Liu, Ruiqi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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_version_ 1866914429107437568
author Panda, Saunak Kumar
Xiang, Yisha
Liu, Ruiqi
author_facet Panda, Saunak Kumar
Xiang, Yisha
Liu, Ruiqi
contents Matching plays an important role in the logical allocation of resources across a wide range of industries. The benefits of matching have been increasingly recognized in manufacturing industries. In particular, capacity sharing has received much attention recently. In this paper, we consider the problem of dynamically matching demand-capacity types of manufacturing resources. We formulate the multi-period, many-to-many manufacturing resource-matching problem as a sequential decision process. The formulated manufacturing resource-matching problem involves large state and action spaces, and it is not practical to accurately model the joint distribution of various types of demands. To address the curse of dimensionality and the difficulty of explicitly modeling the transition dynamics, we use a model-free deep reinforcement learning approach to find optimal matching policies. Moreover, to tackle the issue of infeasible actions and slow convergence due to initial biased estimates caused by the maximum operator in Q-learning, we introduce two penalties to the traditional Q-learning algorithm: a domain knowledge-based penalty based on a prior policy and an infeasibility penalty that conforms to the demand-supply constraints. We establish theoretical results on the convergence of our domain knowledge-informed Q-learning providing performance guarantee for small-size problems. For large-size problems, we further inject our modified approach into the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, which we refer to as domain knowledge-informed DDPG (DKDDPG). In our computational study, including small- and large-scale experiments, DKDDPG consistently outperformed traditional DDPG and other RL algorithms, yielding higher rewards and demonstrating greater efficiency in time and episodes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_27066
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamic resource matching in manufacturing using deep reinforcement learning
Panda, Saunak Kumar
Xiang, Yisha
Liu, Ruiqi
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Optimization and Control
90C40, 90B30, 68T05
I.2.6; J.6; G.2.2
Matching plays an important role in the logical allocation of resources across a wide range of industries. The benefits of matching have been increasingly recognized in manufacturing industries. In particular, capacity sharing has received much attention recently. In this paper, we consider the problem of dynamically matching demand-capacity types of manufacturing resources. We formulate the multi-period, many-to-many manufacturing resource-matching problem as a sequential decision process. The formulated manufacturing resource-matching problem involves large state and action spaces, and it is not practical to accurately model the joint distribution of various types of demands. To address the curse of dimensionality and the difficulty of explicitly modeling the transition dynamics, we use a model-free deep reinforcement learning approach to find optimal matching policies. Moreover, to tackle the issue of infeasible actions and slow convergence due to initial biased estimates caused by the maximum operator in Q-learning, we introduce two penalties to the traditional Q-learning algorithm: a domain knowledge-based penalty based on a prior policy and an infeasibility penalty that conforms to the demand-supply constraints. We establish theoretical results on the convergence of our domain knowledge-informed Q-learning providing performance guarantee for small-size problems. For large-size problems, we further inject our modified approach into the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, which we refer to as domain knowledge-informed DDPG (DKDDPG). In our computational study, including small- and large-scale experiments, DKDDPG consistently outperformed traditional DDPG and other RL algorithms, yielding higher rewards and demonstrating greater efficiency in time and episodes.
title Dynamic resource matching in manufacturing using deep reinforcement learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Optimization and Control
90C40, 90B30, 68T05
I.2.6; J.6; G.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27066