Analytical target cascading for optimal configuration of cloud manufacturing services

Combining with advanced technologies (e.g., cloud computing, Internet of Things, and service-oriented technology), cloud manufacturing was proposed and gained wide attention. By managing a huge amount of distributed and idle manufacturing resources to meet various manufacturing requirements, cloud manufacturing provides sustainable means for promoting cleaner production. Manufacturing service configuration plays an important role in implementing cloud manufacturing. Most research adopted central optimization methods to get optimal service configuration results. However, these all-in-one methods with an individual decision model can hardly maintain the autonomous decision rights of different service providers. Consequently, service providers may lose their flexibility to achieve private decision objectives, which is unfavorable for keeping the sustainable competitive advantages of enterprises. In this paper, a decentralized decision mechanism named analytical target cascading is introduced to solve the manufacturing service configuration problem. An analytical target cascading model for the manufacturing service configuration problem is proposed based on the hierarchical structure of cloud manufacturing system. Elements in the proposed model are formulated and solved in a loose coupling and distributed manner. The situation when alternative service providers owned autonomous decision rights to configure their respective upstream manufacturing stages is also considered. A case study is employed to verify the effectiveness of analytical target cascading in solving the manufacturing service configuration problem. It shows that analytical target cascading can not only obtain the same manufacturing service configuration results as central optimization method but also maintain the autonomous decision rights of different service providers.