Cloud manufacturing is emerging as a new manufacturing paradigm as well as an integrated technology, which is promising in transforming today’s manufacturing industry towards service-oriented, highly collaborative and innovative manufacturing in the future. In order to better understand cloud manufacturing, this paper provides a critical review of relevant concepts and ideas in cloud computing as well as advanced manufacturing technologies that contribute to the evolution of cloud manufacturing. The key characteristics of cloud manufacturing are also presented in order to clarify the cloud manufacturing concept. Furthermore, a four-process structure is proposed to describe the typical scenario in cloud manufacturing, hoping to provide a theoretical reference for practical applications. Finally, an application case of a private cloud manufacturing system for a conglomerate is presented.

Cloud manufacturing: key characteristics and applications

The concept of cloud manufacturing is emerging as a new promising manufacturing paradigm, as well as a business model, which is reshaping the service-oriented, highly collaborative, knowledge-intensive and eco-efficient manufacturing industry. However, the basic concepts about cloud manufacturing are still in discussion. Both academia and industry will need to have a commonly accepted definition of cloud manufacturing, as well as further guidance and recommendations on how to develop and implement cloud manufacturing. In this paper, we review some of the research work and clarify some fundamental terminologies in this field. Further, we developed a cloud manufacturing systems which may serve as an application example. From a systematic and practical perspective, the key requirements of cloud manufacturing platforms are investigated, and then we propose a cloud manufacturing platform prototype, MfgCloud. Finally, a public cloud manufacturing system for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) is presented...

Cloud manufacturing: from concept to practice

How to select suitable partners is critical to virtual enterprise (VE) success and has attracted much attention for both researchers and practitioners. In many practical situations, there usually exists incomplete and uncertain information, and the decision makers cannot easily express their judgments on the candidates with exact and crisp values. Therefore, an extended technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method for group decision making with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers is proposed to solve the partner selection problem under incomplete and uncertain information environment in this paper. And the feasibility and practicability of the extended TOPSIS method are further manifested through an illustrative example. Results show that this extended TOPSIS method for group decision making with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers is more suitable to cope with the partner selection problem under incomplete and uncertain information environment.

An extended TOPSIS method with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers for virtual enterprise partner selection

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a practical model usable by organizations to help form agile virtual enterprises. The model helps to integrate a variety of factors, tangible and intangible, strategic and operational, for decision‐making purposes.Design/methodology/approach – A comprehensive development of factors is determined from the literature and an analytical network process (ANP) methodology is introduced for decision model development. An illustrative example is presented.Findings – The results provide a robust model that will aid decision makers and agile virtual enterprise brokers form partnerships within these organizational structures.Research limitations/implications – The paper introduces a conceptual model with an illustrative validating example. A practical application and reapplication of the model are required to further validate the model. ANP can require significant managerial input for its application, potentially causing fatigue for decision makers.Practical implications – Practi...

A strategic model for agile virtual enterprise partner selection

A framework for Virtual Organization creation in a breeding environment

Agility is the competitive advantage in the global manufacturing environment. It is believed that the agility can be realized by dynamically reconfigurable virtual enterprise. However, the configuration of virtual enterprises is a challenge to us. In selecting the partners for the reconfiguration of virtual enterprise, many factors should be taken into consideration. However, the manufacturing cost and time to market are the most important factors. In this paper, in considering the completion time as a constraint we model the partner selection problem by an integer programming formulation to minimize the manufacturing cost. The formulation is then transformed into a graph-theoretical formulation and a 2-phase algorithm is developed to solve the problem. In the first phase, a polynomial bounded algorithm is proposed to find the earliest completion time, so we obtained a feasible solution. In phase 2, we improve the solution by exchanging the candidate partners in keeping the solution in the feasible region. Although we may not find the optimal solution for the problem by the improvement algorithm, the objective is reduced iteration by iteration. Thus, the algorithm is efficient and can be applicable to practical problems. An illustrative example is presented to show the application of the proposed algorithm.

Ping Su

Papers

Selection of partners in virtual enterprise paradigm