Integrated cross-supplier order and logistic scheduling in cloud manufacturing

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.