Scheduling in cloud manufacturing: state-of-the-art and research challenges

For the past eight years, cloud manufacturing as a new manufacturing paradigm has attracted a large amount of research interest worldwide. The aim of cloud manufacturing is to deliver on-demand manufacturing services to consumers over the Internet. Scheduling is one of the critical means for achieving the aim of cloud manufacturing. Thus far, about 158 articles have been published on scheduling in cloud manufacturing. However, research on scheduling in cloud manufacturing faces numerous challenges. Thus, there is an urgent need to ascertain the current status and identify issues and challenges to be addressed in the future. Covering articles published on the subject over the past eight years, this article aims to provide a state-of-the-art literature survey on scheduling issues in cloud manufacturing. A detailed statistical analysis of the literature is provided based on the data gathered from the Elsevier’s Scopus abstract and citation database. Typical characteristics of scheduling issues in cloud manufacturing are systematically summarised. A comparative analysis of scheduling issues in cloud manufacturing and other scheduling issues such as cloud computing scheduling, workshop scheduling and supply chain scheduling is also carried out. Finally, future research issues and challenges are identified.