A Multi-Objective Scheduling Model for a Cloud Manufacturing System with Pricing, Equity, and Order Rejection

This paper addresses a scheduling problem in a cloud manufacturing (CMfg) system. As a service orientated system based on customers' order, cost and time related metrics are significantly important for the success of a CMfg system. Another crucial issue that has a great effect on the system prosper is establishing equity among the factories that participated in the cloud system to get benefit according to their capacity, and on the other hand establishing equity among customers that submit their orders to the system based on their preference and nature of works. Therefore, in this paper, a comprehensive multi-objective mathematical model is developed that is able to consider both customers and factories' utilities and equity among them. This model can simultaneously make a decision regarding rejection or acceptance of customers' jobs, assigning jobs to machines, determining a price for each individual job, and scheduling of jobs on machines. An augmented epsilon-constraint method is employed to solve and find Pareto-optimal front for the problem. Finally, computational results and a sensitivity analysis are provided to demonstrate the performance of the solution method and the sensitivity of the results according to key parameters' changes. (C) 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.