Game Theory Based Dynamic Event-Driven Service Scheduling in Cloud Manufacturing

Abstract

Due to the individualized consumer needs, cloud manufacturing (CMfg) has been widely used in the optimization of available manufacturing resource allocation to enhance resource utilization and reduce energy consumption. However, efficient scheduling of tasks and subtasks under dynamic CMfg environments to these re-sources are challenging problems. This paper proposes a game theory based on task scheduling and model selection for effectively exploiting distributed manufacturing resources in CMfg, and the Nash equilibrium (NE) in this game theory is implemented by a double ant colony optimization (DACO) algorithm. Through this model, services provided by different providers can handle a batch of tasks in real-time. Besides, to satisfy different service providers and demanders, the proposed approach considers multiple task attributes simultaneously, including completion time, cost, service quality, service composition capability, service availability, energy consumption, service sustainability, service maintainability, and service trust. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is not only effective for the relevant optimization objective but also can achieve great performance under real-time CMfg environments. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —To provide the best production guides, the efficiency of configuration optimization of manufacturing resources is critical to the control and management of smart manufacturing systems. This paper investigates the dynamic scheduling problem for manufacturing services in CMfg. Previous task scheduling approaches fail to evaluate multiple factors together, like completion time, cost, and energy consumption. Also, the traditional scheduling method cannot respond to requests caused by service state changes in an efficient way. Therefore, in this paper, a game theory model that consists of a static scheduling sub-game and a dynamic selection sub-game is presented. This model is achieved by adopting a proposed double ant colony optimization algorithm that solves constrained non-linear programming. Simulation experiments shown in this paper prove that the proposed method outperforms existing scheduling methods in multiple aspects, including completion time and energy consumption. Also, this method can be readily implemented and incorporated into real production environments. Future work can improve the proposed method by analyzing the uncertainty during scheduling tasks and sharing the logistics resources on the same routes.