Integrated cross-supplier order and logistic scheduling in cloud manufacturing

Abstract

In the cloud manufacturing environment, integrated cross-supplier order and logistic scheduling can benefit both suppliers and third-party logistics, significantly reduce their production and transport costs to improve the overall efficiency of the supply chain. This paper aims to construct a hybrid solution with both cross-supplier order assignments and third-party logistics scheduling under a centralised scheduling mode of cloud manufacturing platform, which is defined as an integrated cross-supplier order and logistic scheduling (ICSOLS) problem. Since the problem is NP-hard, a strategy based on an improved shuffled frog-leaping algorithm was developed for solving the model. A numerical case was designed for demonstrating the modelling process and analysing results. Different scales of simulations are designed to verify validity and robustness. Results show the proposed approach and algorithm can solve the defined problem efficiently.

Keywords:

• Cloud manufacturing
• integrated scheduling
• logistic scheduling
• order allocation
• improved shuffled frog-leaping algorithm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant [number 71671090, 51705250 and 71871117], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under grant NP2020022 and Qinglan Project for excellent youth or middle-aged academic leaders in Jiangsu Province (China).

Notes on contributors

Qiao Wu

Wu Qiao is a PhD student at Economics and Management college, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Her research focuses on production planning and service scheduling – more precisely, on how to construct mathematical optimisation models and algorithms in cloud manufacturing environment.

Naiming Xie

Xie Naiming is a Full Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His main interest is in developing methods and tools for grey information modelling, intelligent data analysis and scheduling. He serves as the director of Chinese Society of Optimisation, Overall Planning an Economical Mathematics, the secretary-general of International Association of Grey system and Uncertainty analysis, the vice-president of Grey System Professional Committee, and Standing Committee Member of Youth Committee of Chinese Society of Optimisation, Overall Planning an Economical Mathematics.

Shaoxiang Zheng

Zheng Shaoxiang is a second-year PhD student at the School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He majored in Management Science and Engineering. His main topics of interest and research are: batch processing machine scheduling, production planning and control.