New Benchmark for Reskilling-Aware Production-Inventory Control Introduced

A new benchmark called SkillChain-Gym has been introduced to address the complex interplay between workforce capabilities and production planning. This benchmark provides a standardized environment for evaluating production-inventory control strategies, specifically considering how worker skills evolve, including certification, skill decay, and the time required for training. The system models a single-site operation with realistic constraints, where training competes with production for worker hours. It includes various disruption scenarios and offers different feasibility modes and metrics to assess operational efficiency, resilience, and skill development. Initial evaluations of various policies, including production-only, reactive adaptive, and static insurance approaches, show that no single policy dominates across all scenarios. However, policies capable of training consistently outperform those without, especially when skill maintenance is crucial due to forgetting.