A grey correlation based supply-demand matching of machine tools with multiple quality factors in cloud manufacturing environment

Machine tool is one of the most important manufacturing resources for manufacturing enterprises. Taking into account the machine tool's common characteristics of decentralization and heterogeneity in cloud manufacturing (CMfg) environment, it is difficult to precisely find an appropriate machine tool from massive manufacturing service candidates to a customized manufacturing demand in CMfg. This paper proposes a multi-quality model for characterizing a manufacturing demand and a capability model for describing a manufacturing cloud service supported by machine tools, and constructs a mapping mechanism between the two proposed models. Based on the grey correlation theory, a machine tool supply-demand matching method is put forward. Finally, a case study is conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed method.