Distributional Constrained Reinforcement Learning for Supply Chain Optimization

• Published in: Computer Aided Chemical Engineering Vol. 52; pp. 1649 - 1654
• Main Authors: Bermúdez, Jaime Sabal, del Rio Chanona, Antonio, Tsay, Calvin
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Inventory management; Process operations; Safe reinforcement learning; Inventory management; Process operations; Safe reinforcement learning
• ISBN: 9780443152740; 0443152748
• ISSN: 1570-7946
• DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-443-15274-0.50262-6

This work studies reinforcement learning (RL) in the context of multi-period supply chains subject to constraints, e.g., on inventory. We introduce Distributional Constrained Policy Optimization (DCPO), a novel approach for reliable constraint satisfaction in RL. Our approach is based on Constrained Policy Optimization (CPO), which is subject to approximation errors that in practice lead it to converge to infeasible policies. We address this issue by incorporating aspects of distributional RL. Using a supply chain case study, we show that DCPO improves the rate at which the RL policy converges and ensures reliable constraint satisfaction by the end of training. The proposed method also greatly reduces the variance of returns between runs; this result is significant in the context of policy gradient methods, which intrinsically introduce high variance during training.