arXiv:2606. 18820v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Sequential decision problems often exhibit an asymmetric evolution of information and decision flexibility: as a decision cycle unfolds, the agent receives richer information while feasible actions expire due to operational cutoffs, commitments, or resource constraints.
arXiv:2606. 06201v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Pharmaceutical supply chains (PSCs) struggle with inventory management (IM) due to unpredictable demand patterns and variable lead times associated with restocking.
arXiv:2512. 14617v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Many practical decision-making problems involve tasks whose success depends on the entire system history, rather than on achieving a state with desired properties.
The paper introduces a framework for optimal policy improvement in reinforcement learning, defining it as the best single update under given constraints. It shows that restricting improvement to a subset of states is equivalent to solving an induced Markov Decision Process, linking planning with explicit or implicit models to optimal policy improvement. The authors develop a novel operator for greedification under approximate evaluation, demonstrating empirical gains across several RL algorithms and settings.
arXiv:2608. 02343v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Many operational problems are constrained sequential decision processes with large, combinatorial action spaces and interdependent feasibility constraints.
arXiv:2607. 04056v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Modern supply chains span diverse operational environments, ranging from e-commerce distribution networks to customized production-to-order manufacturing lines.
arXiv:2607. 02941v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-product kitting delivery imposes significant challenges for real-time scheduling in hybrid manufacturing systems that integrate processing and assembly, as dynamic order arrivals simultaneously alter supply dependencies and the set of feasible job-machine assignments.
arXiv:2409. 14557v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study a structured class of Markov Decision Processes, known as Exo-MDPs, in which the state space is partitioned into exogenous and endogenous components.
The paper introduces proximal residual value functions for two‑timescale decision systems, where a planning layer supplies a continuation‑value function to a real‑time optimizer that allocates resources, with inventory placement as a motivating example. The authors propose an end‑to‑end reinforcement learning method that learns a convex residual added to a strictly convex potential, enabling well‑posed optimization and end‑to‑end differentiation while maintaining an explicit convex objective for real‑time execution. They also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for smooth value functions to produce decisions consistent across planning and execution timescales, and demonstrate a 5.0% reduction in routing and transfer cost in an offline simulation using data from a large e‑commerce retailer.
arXiv:2608. 02509v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Sequential decision-making in real-world applications often involves uncertainty about the environment's model.
arXiv:2606. 10979v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many Markov decision processes (MDPs) in operations research have feasible actions that are state dependent and defined implicitly by various operational constraints.
arXiv:2609.33289v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Autonomous large language model (LLM) agents operating in multi-product markets must make sequential decisions under information asymmetry and reso...
arXiv:2606. 10705v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning promises to optimize sequential decisions in large-scale systems.