Cooperation Emergence of Manufacturing Services in Cloud Manufacturing with Agent-Based Modeling and Simulating

Abstract

With the development of information and network technology, a new type of manufacturing paradigm, known as a service-oriented Cloud Manufacturing (CMfg), is emerged. In the CMfg paradigm, geographically distributed various manufacturing resources authorized by different companies are encapsulated as different manufacturing services (MSs) supported by the enabling technologies, such as cloud computing, Industrial Internet of Things, virtualization technologies, etc. MSs are provided according to the demands of manufacturing tasks (MTs) presented by various customers via the IoT (Internet of Things) in CMfg paradigm. Generally, one MS may complete one MT, but mostly one MT needs more MSs to complete it cooperatively. Furthermore, these MSs are perhaps controlled and managed by different enterprises. As an autonomous entity, each MS generally makes decision in light of its own interests, and their own interests generally have conflicts with the others' and the collective ones. To solve the conflicts through MSs' cooperation is an efficient and low-cost method to maximize both individual and collective interests. Hence, the influences of individual decision-making behaviors on cooperation are explored and discussed in CMfg paradigm. The evolutionary game theory and agent-based modeling and simulating method are employed to model and simulate individual behaviors of MSs during the process of forming the coalition for completing MTs. In addition, the learning mechanism of MSs is discussed in the decision-making process. The simulation results show that decision behaviors of MSs are positively influenced by the information transparency of the CMfg environment and the learning mechanism of MSs effects on the cooperative emergence.