Service load balancing,task scheduling and transportation optimisation in cloud manufacturing by applying queuing system

Recently, there is a great deal of attention in Cloud Manufacturing (CMfg) as a new service-oriented manufacturing paradigm. To integrate the activities and services through a CMfg, both Service Load balancing and Transportation Optimisation (SLTO) are two major issues to ease the success of CMfg. Based on this motivation, this study presents a new queuing network for parallel scheduling of multiple processes and orders from customers to be supplied. Another main contribution of this paper is a new heuristic algorithm based on the process time of the tasks of the orders (LBPT) to solve the proposed problem. To formulate it, a novel multi-objective mathematical model as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is developed. Accordingly, this study employs the multi-choice multi-objective goal programming with a utility function to model the introduced SLTO problem. To better solve the problem, a Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm is developed to tackle this optimisation problem. Finally, a comparative study with different analyses through four scenarios demonstrates that there are some improvements on the sum of process and transportation costs by 6.1%, the sum of process and transportation times by 10.6%, and the service load disparity by 48.6% relative to the benchmark scenario.     

Cloud manufacturing: a new manufacturing paradigm

Combining with the emerged technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of things, service-oriented technologies and high performance computing, a new manufacturing paradigm – cloud manufacturing (CMfg) – for solving the bottlenecks in the informatisation development and manufacturing applications is introduced. The concept of CMfg, including its architecture, typical characteristics and the key technologies for implementing a CMfg service platform, is discussed. Three core components for constructing a CMfg system, i.e. CMfg resources, manufacturing cloud service and manufacturing cloud are studied, and the constructing method for manufacturing cloud is investigated. Finally, a prototype of CMfg and the existing related works conducted by the authors' group on CMfg are briefly presented.     

Robust and stable multi-task manufacturing scheduling with uncertainties using a two-stage extended genetic algorithm

ABSTRACT

In cloud manufacturing (CMfg), unexpected uncertainties can occur in real-world manufacturing processes that could make the predetermined schedule infeasible. A new multi-objective proactive method is proposed in this situation to evaluate the proactive schedule. A novel two-stage extended genetic algorithm (2S-EGA) is proposed to generate proactive schedules that consider service interruptions. The experimental results confirmed that the obtained proactive schedule produces great performance when applied to multi-task scheduling problems with service interruptions. Furthermore, the results also showed that the proactive schedule obtained by the proposed approach is more robust and stable than other baseline algorithms taken from the literature.     

A new three-dimensional manufacturing service composition method under various structures using improved Flower Pollination Algorithm

With the growing complexity of customer requirements and the increasing scale of manufacturing services, how to select and combine the single services to meet the complex demand of the customer has become a growing concern. This paper presents a new manufacturing service composition method to solve the multi-objective optimization problem based on quality of service (QoS). The proposed model not only presents different methods for calculating the transportation time and transportation cost under various structures but also solves the three-dimensional composition optimization problem, including service aggregation, service selection, and service scheduling simultaneously. Further, an improved Flower Pollination Algorithm (IFPA) is proposed to solve the three-dimensional composition optimization problem using a matrix-based representation scheme. The mutation operator and crossover operator of the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm are also used to extend the basic Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) to improve its performance. Compared to Genetic Algorithm, DE, and basic FPA, the experimental results confirm that the proposed method demonstrates superior performance than other meta heuristic algorithms and can obtain better manufacturing service composition solutions.     

An integrated model of the effects of service evaluation,corporate image,and switching barriers on customer loyalty

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between service evaluation, corporate image, switching barriers, and customers’ intentional loyalty. The proposed model was tested and valuated in the mobile services context. A field survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire about the investigated concepts. To test the proposed hypotheses, a model was constructed and estimated using the method of partial least squares. Findings indicate that service evaluation constructs have both direct and indirect effects, through customer satisfaction and corporate image, on customers’ intentional loyalty. The outcomes suggest that marketers, in their effort to develop more customer-oriented marketing plans, should consider both the pool-in factors, reflecting the value of the provided services, customer satisfaction, and corporate image, and the interactions among them, as well as the push-back factors, as they all impact on customers’ behavioral intentions. The research was limited to one service setting and the proposed model should be cross-validated in other service settings before the relationships among its components are fully clarified. Also, the use of cross-section design reduces inference ability regarding temporal changes in research constructs. This article contributes in adding to the body of the existing knowledge by considering both corporate image and switching barriers, along with service evaluation constructs, as antecedents of consumer’s intentions determination, resulting in a model that has not been investigated thus far.     

Scheduling multimedia services in cloud computing environment

Currently, security is a critical factor for multimedia services running in the cloud computing environment. As an effective mechanism, trust can improve security level and mitigate attacks within cloud computing environments. Unfortunately, existing scheduling strategy for multimedia service in the cloud computing environment do not integrate trust mechanism when making scheduling decisions. In this paper, we propose a scheduling scheme for multimedia services in multi clouds. At first, a novel scheduling architecture is presented. Then, We build a trust model including both subjective trust and objective trust to evaluate the trust degree of multimedia service providers. By employing Bayesian theory, the subjective trust degree between multimedia service providers and users is obtained. According to the attributes of QoS, the objective trust degree of multimedia service providers is calculated. Finally, a scheduling algorithm integrating trust of entities is proposed by considering the deadline, cost and trust requirements of multimedia services. The scheduling algorithm heuristically hunts for reasonable resource allocations and satisfies the requirement of trust and meets deadlines for the multimedia services. Detailed simulated experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed trust scheduling scheme.     

Advanced manufacturing systems: supply–demand matching of manufacturing resource based on complex networks and Internet of Things

ABSTRACT

After investigation on the existing advanced manufacturing systems (AMSs), it is found that supply–demand matching of manufacturing resource is one of the common issues to be addressed in all AMSs, and methods for addressing this issue have evolved from P2P (peer-to-peer)-based, to information centre-based, and to platform (or system)-based matching, and are moving towards socialisation and service-based solutions. In order to adapt to this trend, a new method for manufacturing resource supply–demand matching based on complex networks and Internet of Things (IoT) is proposed, and a four-layered architecture for implementing this method is designed. In this method, IoT technology is employed to realise the intelligent perception and accessing of various manufacturing resources and capabilities (MR&C), which enables logical aggregation of various distributed MR&C in the form of services. Then complex networks model and theory are used to realise the efficient manufacturing service management, optimal-allocation, and supply–demand matching. In this article, the specific key technologies for implementing the method are presented, including key technologies for manufacturing service generation and aggregation, manufacturing demand/task management, supply–demand matching of MR&C in the form of services, and value/utility adding based on manufacturing service network (MSN), manufacturing task network (MTN) and manufacturing enterprises collaborative network (ECN).     

Practical POMDP-based test mechanism for quality assurance in volunteer crowdsourcing

ABSTRACT

In volunteer crowdsourcing, tasks are published via an open call and completed by many workers without reward. Under the traditional volunteer crowdsourcing paradigm, workers with diverse levels of reliabilities are chosen indiscriminately; moreover, each worker’s performance may change over the time. Thus, the quality of task completions is a key concern in volunteer crowdsourcing. To improve the task completion quality (i.e. the accuracy of task answers), we adopt an adaptive test task (with a true answer) insertion approach to detect a worker’s performance dynamically, thereby ensuring that normal tasks (with unknown true answers) are assigned when this worker is currently deemed reliable via testing. To decide when to route test tasks to detect a worker’s performance or assign normal tasks to be completed in a high quality state, we proposed a Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP) based test mechanism without any complicated parameter estimation, which is more practical for real-world volunteer crowdsourcing applications. In addition, we also designed rejection strategies to reject malicious workers and dubious answers. Experiments on real datasets demonstrate that the proposed test mechanism performs better in the accuracy of task answers, compared with benchmark methods.     

Research on manufacturing grid resource service optimal-selection and composition framework

In order to address the resource service optimal-selection (RSOS) and composition problem in manufacturing grid (MGrid) system and provide high-quality service to users, an MGrid RSOS and composition framework (MGrid-RSOSCF) is investigated in this study. The process of RSOS and composition is divided into the following five steps in MGrid-RSOSCF: (1) decomposing the submitted manufacturing task into several subtasks (i.e. single resource service requested task) if the submitted task is a multiple resource service requested task; (2) searching out the qualified resource service for each decomposed subtask and generating the corresponding candidate resource service set; (3) retrieving, evaluating and comparing the quality of service (QoS) for each candidate resource service, and provide data for service optimal-selection and composition –if the submitted task is a single resource service requested task; (4) evaluating synthetically the overall quality of each candidate resource service and ranking them, and selecting the optimal one for the task – if the submitted manufacturing task is an multiple resource service requested task; (5) selecting one candidate resource service from each candidate resource service set and constructing a new composite resource service according to the submitted task requirements, and collecting all the possible resource service composite execution paths (RSCEP) and selecting the optimal paths to execute the task. The proposed MGrid-RSOSCF consists of five layers and each layer provides the corresponding necessary services and algorithms to address one problem mentioned above. The five layers are: (1) T-layer, responsible for MGrid task decomposition; (2) S-layer, responsible for resource service match and search; (3) Q-layer, responsible for QoS processing; (4) O-layer, responsible for evaluating and ranking the candidate resource service and (5) C-layer is responsible for resource service composition and optimal-selection. The case study and comparison of performances of the algorithms demonstrate that the proposed methods are sound on success rate and executing efficiency.     

发展电子物流系统及案例研究

全球竞争使公司在提高交付的产品和服务的绩效方面面临更大的压力。在努力提高送货服务质量,公司外包其物流服务,包括包装、仓储（库存管理）和货物发运到客户,沿物流价值链整合活动中,沟通起着重要的作用。信息技术,如电子数据交换（EDI）、互联网和电子商务极大地有助于改善物流链中的合作伙伴的沟通。特别是实时信息系统,如基于网络的物流信息系统,有助于提高第三方物流（3PL）服务。文中通过对一个电子物流的案例研究来说明信息技术的影响,尤其是互联网和EDI在物流价值链绩效方面。根据文献调查和案例研究,提出一个框架,帮助企业开发一个电子物流系统,以提高自己的竞争力。     

基于微博的客户服务策略

微博客服已成为企业核心竞争力之一。微博客服具有全天候服务、人情味、信息分类、严谨自律等特征。企业微博客服策略包括注意倾听、投客户所好、视客户为智囊、全员服务、坚守诚信等方面。     

An agent-based peer-to-peer architecture for semantic discovery of manufacturing services across virtual enterprises

With the development of virtual enterprise (VE) paradigm, the usage of serviceoriented architecture (SOA) is increasingly being considered for facilitating the integration and utilisation of distributed manufacturing resources. However, due to the heterogeneous nature among VEs, the dynamic nature of a VE and the autonomous nature of each VE member, the lack of both sophisticated coordination mechanism in the popular centralised infrastructure and semantic expressivity in the existing SOA standards make the current centralised, syntactic service discovery method undesirable. This motivates the proposed agent-based peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture for semantic discovery of manufacturing services across VEs. Multi-agent technology provides autonomous and flexible problemsolving capabilities in dynamic and adaptive VE environments. Peer-to-peer overlay provides highly scalable coupling across decentralised VEs, each of which exhibiting as a peer composed of multiple agents dealing with manufacturing services. The proposed architecture utilises a novel, efficient, two-stage search strategy – semantic peer discovery and semantic service discovery – to handle the complex searches of manufacturing services across VEs through fast peer filtering. The operation and experimental evaluation of the prototype system are presented to validate the implementation of the proposed approach.     

电力重要客户定制服务成本回收策略研究

随着电力客户尤其是电力重要客户对电力服务的要求日益提高,传统电力服务的积弊不断暴露,客户满意度难以提高,供电企业良好的社会形象也难以塑造,服务成本补偿机制的缺失是造成这一问题的重要原因之一。本文基于二元价值结构理论,分析了基础服务和增值服务两类电力服务,并对回收服务成本的可行性和必要性进行了论述。文章对重要客户和普通客户关于两类电力服务的诉求和支付能力及意愿进行比较分析,建立供电企业重要客户服务定价-服务质量矩阵,比较单独定价和组合定价两种成本回收策略,提出针对电力重要客户采取组合定价策略,从而实现供电企业和客户的双赢。     

Applications integration in a hybrid cloud computing environment: modelling and platform

With the development of application services providers and cloud computing, more and more small- and medium-sized business enterprises use software services and even infrastructure services provided by professional information service companies to replace all or part of their information systems (ISs). These information service companies provide applications, such as data storage, computing processes, document sharing and even management information system services as public resources to support the business process management of their customers. However, no cloud computing service vendor can satisfy the full functional IS requirements of an enterprise. As a result, enterprises often have to simultaneously use systems distributed in different clouds and their intra enterprise ISs. Thus, this article presents a framework to integrate applications deployed in public clouds and intra ISs. A run-time platform is developed and a cross-computing environment process modelling technique is also developed to improve the feasibility of ISs under hybrid cloud computing environments.     

Learning by customers as co-producers in financial services: An empirical study of the effects of learning channels and customer characteristics

As customers become more involved in executing service tasks, service performance is increasingly reliant on the efficiency and effectiveness of this customer co-production. While organizational and employee learning have been extensively studied, learning by customers in their role as co-producers is largely unexplored. To explore how customers learn to be better co-producers, we examine whether learning channels and customer characteristics impact the customer learning rate. Using longitudinal panel data consisting of 954 customers who adopted and used a bank??s online banking product over a 12-month period, we find that service delivery channels can have dual effects on customer learning, acting as learning channels to accelerate customer learning and/or impeding learning through channel substitution. In addition, customers?? experiences working on related technology-mediated tasks and absorptive capacity increase their learning rate. Overall, our results suggest that customer learning can be designed into the service delivery system by encouraging the use of channels with complementary learning effects and discouraging channel substitution.     

Strategic segmentation in front-line services: matching customers,employees and human resource systems

This paper examines variation in the use of high involvement work practices in service and sales operations. I argue that the relationship between the customer and front-line service provider is a central feature that distinguishes production-level service activities from manufacturing. In particular, through strategic segmentation, firms are able to segment customers by their demand characteristics and to match the complexity and potential revenue stream of the customer to the skills of employees and the human resource system that shapes the customer–employee interface. Unlike manufacturing, where high involvement systems have emerged in a wide variety of product markets, therefore, service organizations are likely to use high involvement systems only to serve higher value-added customers because of the high costs of these systems and the labour-intensive nature of services. Data from a nationally random sample of 354 call centres in US telecommunications documents this pattern: from classic mass production approaches for back office workers and increasingly for front office residential service agents, to greater involvement for small business service providers and high involvement practices for middle-market service agents.     

POS机银行卡交费系统在哈尔滨电业局的应用

随着电力经营业务的不断扩展,用电客户数量的增加以及供电企业优质服务的更高要求,以银行代收为主要收费方式的营销模式已经呈现出一系列不足,哈尔滨电业局在全国首家建立完善的POS机银行卡实施查询交费系统,解决电费回收难,方便广大电力客户进行多样化、方便化自助交费方式。从系统投入使用已经实现了电费回收五百余万元,充分说明了POS机交费得到了广大用户的认可。     

An application of six sigma methodology to enhance leisure service quality

Thanks to flourishing development of the service industry for the past few years, its GDP output value is over 73%, which accounts for 58% of the employment population. The leisure service industry, in particular grows by multiple revealing its significant importance. As there is a feature of high homogeneity and substitution in the same trade, the core issue lies on enhancement of service quality in an environment of keen competition. As a result, six sigma (6σ) is applied in this research to improve service quality and increase competitiveness of the leisure industry. First, the service quality model proposed by Parasuraman, A., V. A. Zeithaml, and L. L. Berry (PZB model for short) is utilized to design the items in the service quality questionnaire. Importance and satisfaction of each service item perceived by customers are based for the scale, whose means are further converted to indexes. Thus, a scale-based service performance evaluation matrix with indices of importance as the Y-axis and those of satisfaction as the X-axis is defined. Then, service factors of high importance and low satisfaction are located and defined for improvement in accordance with the index location of each service factor. A measurement model based on the difference between customers’ importance and satisfaction is proposed and a measurement index is defined for an objective evaluation method and procedures. Next, factors of customer dissatisfaction are analyzed and improvement methods are devised. Finally, leisure service quality is monitored by the performance control model.     

SLA-based optimisation of virtualised resource for multi-tier web applications in cloud data centres

Dynamic virtualised resource allocation is the key to quality of service assurance for multi-tier web application services in cloud data centre. In this paper, we develop a self-management architecture of cloud data centres with virtualisation mechanism for multi-tier web application services. Based on this architecture, we establish a flexible hybrid queueing model to determine the amount of virtual machines for each tier of virtualised application service environments. Besides, we propose a non-linear constrained optimisation problem with restrictions defined in service level agreement. Furthermore, we develop a heuristic mixed optimisation algorithm to maximise the profit of cloud infrastructure providers, and to meet performance requirements from different clients as well. Finally, we compare the effectiveness of our dynamic allocation strategy with two other allocation strategies. The simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation method is efficient in improving the overall performance and reducing the resource energy cost.     

顾客服务在现代零售业中的现状及对策研究

零售业的顾客服务是指帮助顾客解决问题为使其满意而开展的活动,它伴随于商品销售的全过程,是为促进商品销售而给顾客提供的无形产品,在现代零售业中发挥着越来越重要的作用。但我国零售业的服务水平并不高,大多数的零售企业都存在着服务理念错误、服务标准不规范、服务执行不到位、服务形式陈旧等问题。零售企业可以通过树立正确的服务理念、建立高效的服务标准、提高一线员工的服务水平和不断创新服务体系等措施提高企业的零售服务水平。