Scheduling (production processes)

Mathematics

Job shop scheduling

Reinforcement learning

Operating system

Distributed computing

Mathematical optimization

Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

Edge device

Embedded system

Artificial intelligence

Edge computing

Computer science

Routing (electronic design automation)

Cloud computing

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics

Manufacturing is involved with complex job shop scheduling problems (JSP). In smart factories, edge computing supports computing resources at the edge of production in a distributed way to reduce response time of making production decisions. However, most works on JSP did not consider edge computing. Therefore, this paper proposes a smart manufacturing factory framework based on edge computing, and further investigates the JSP under such a framework. With recent success of some AI applications, the deep Q network (DQN), which combines deep learning and reinforcement learning, has showed its great computing power to solve complex problems. Therefore, we adjust the DQN with an edge computing framework to solve the JSP. Different from the classical DQN with only one decision, this paper extends the DQN to address the decisions of multiple edge devices. Simulation results show that the proposed method performs better than the other methods using only one dispatching rule.

Smart Manufacturing Scheduling With Edge Computing Using Multiclass Deep Q Network