Scheduling uniform manufacturing resources via the Internet: A review

Previous scheduling theory assumes that manufacturers have enough manufacturing resources (machines), therefore, rental costs and dynamic changes in machine number are usually neglected. However, the traditional theory no longer fits the new manufacturing environment in which uniform manufacturing resources are shared (UMRS) via the Internet. On an UMRS platform, machines are viewed as a kind of service, which can be released, found, and shared. In this paper, a multi-agent system for the UMRS model is constructed and scheduling goals of each agent are analyzed. Compared with traditional scheduling problems, we find that scheduling in the UMRS environment has three characteristics. First, it is necessary to consider the costs of renting and using machines because machines rented from the UMRS platform may belong to different manufacturers. Second, the number of available machines is dynamic which depends on the behavior of manufacturers who are involved in sharing activities. Third, integrated scheduling of production and distribution is an inevitable issue because the available machines may be located at different locations. According to these characteristics, an overview of relevant scheduling literature is given, and several interesting issues are identified for future research.