# Novel Multi-Agent Action Masked Deep Reinforcement Learning for General Industrial Assembly Lines Balancing Problems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16635 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16635/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [The Surprising Effectiveness of PPO in Cooperative, Multi-Agent Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01955/) (2021)
- [Safe Reinforcement Learning via Shielding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08611/) (2017)
- [QPLEX: Duplex Dueling Multi-Agent Q-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01062/) (2020)
- [Weighted QMIX: Expanding Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10800/) (2020)
- [FACMAC: Factored Multi-Agent Centralised Policy Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06709/) (2020)
- [A Closer Look at Invalid Action Masking in Policy Gradient Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14171/) (2020)
- [A Review of Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03963/) (2019)
- [Safe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Shielding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11196/) (2021)
- [Revisiting Some Common Practices in Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07505/) (2022)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Agent Power Control in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12095/) (2020)
- [Age of Information Minimization using Multi-agent UAVs based on AI-Enhanced Mean Field Resource Allocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00056/) (2024)
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- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Sim-to-Real Policy Transfer of VTOL-UAVs Offshore Docking Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00887/) (2024)
- [Reinforcement Learning Based Temporal Logic Control with Soft Constraints Using Limit-deterministic Generalized Buchi Automata](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10284/) (2021)
- [Comprehensive and Comparative Analysis between Transfer Learning and Custom Built VGG and CNN-SVM Models for Wildfire Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08171/) (2024)
- [Novel Hybrid Integrated Pix2Pix and WGAN Model with Gradient Penalty for Binary Images Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11865/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Efficient planning of activities is essential for modern industrial assembly lines to uphold manufacturing standards, prevent project constraint violations, and achieve cost-effective operations. While exact solutions to such challenges can be obtained through Integer Programming (IP), the dependence of the search space on input parameters often makes IP computationally infeasible for large-scale scenarios. Heuristic methods, such as Genetic Algorithms, can also be applied, but they frequently produce suboptimal solutions in extensive cases. This paper introduces a novel mathematical model of a generic industrial assembly line formulated as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), without imposing assumptions on the type of assembly line a notable distinction from most existing models. The proposed model is employed to create a virtual environment for training Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents to optimize task and resource scheduling. To enhance the efficiency of agent training, the paper proposes two innovative tools. The first is an action-masking technique, which ensures the agent selects only feasible actions, thereby reducing training time. The second is a multi-agent approach, where each workstation is managed by an individual agent, as a result, the state and action spaces were reduced. A centralized training framework with decentralized execution is adopted, offering a scalable learning architecture for optimizing industrial assembly lines. This framework allows the agents to learn offline and subsequently provide real-time solutions during operations by leveraging a neural network that maps the current factory state to the optimal action. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated through numerical simulations, demonstrating significantly faster convergence to the optimal solution compared to a comparable model-based approach.