SDMSim: A manufacturing service supply–demand matching simulator under cloud environment

Nowadays, with the introduction and application of new information technologies in manufacturing, various advanced manufacturing modes and national strategies have been put forward and paid more and more attention, such as Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet, Cyber-Physical System or Cyber Manufacturing, Made in China 2025, Internet Plus Manufacturing, Cloud Manufacturing, etc. For these modes and strategies, how to realize the effective and intelligent supply–demand matching (SDM) of various manufacturing resources and capabilities (MR&C) in the form of service is one of the common issues and aims. In order to provide a uniformed research platform for related researchers both in academic and industry, the concept of manufacturing service SDM simulator (SDMSim) is proposed in this paper. A hypernetwork based architecture for the simulator is designed, as well as its seven key functions and subsystems, including manufacturing service management, manufacturing task management, manufacturing service SDM hypernetwork, manufacturing service SDM problem formulation and configuration, matching and scheduling algorithms/strategies selection and design, statistical analysis, and visualization. It illustrates that SDMSim has the potential to serve the users of manufacturing service provider, manufacturing service consumer, manufacturing service operator in the field of SoM, as well as the related researchers.