A New Application of Coordination Contracts for Supplier Selection in a Cloud Environment

Abstract

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is considered to be a facilitator for mass manufacturing resources. It is a paradigm of intelligent systems, which makes the manufacturing procedures easier. In this regard, the most important issues of the manufacturing environment are discussed in the literature. Supplier selection and order allocation have been great concerns for researchers in all manufacturing systems, even in a cyber-physical environment allocating orders to the best supplier is of great importance. Hence, this research highlights one of the most challenging issues in a cloud environment which is related to supplier selection in CMfg. A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making framework (i.e., fuzzy DEMATEL-VIKOR) considering sustainable criteria is proposed to help the decision-makers for better dealing with supplier selection in a cloud environment. Selecting the best supplier is not the only issue discussed in this paper. Coordinating the suppliers is also taken into account because a better partnership supplier and the client need to work in a coordinated structure. In the second stage of this paper, the best coordination contract is proposed based on the client’s given score on some predetermined criteria. The results indicate that a revenue-sharing contract is an ideal coordination framework, which will satisfy the client and supplier and help them to work in a coordinated environment.