A Comparative Study on the Impact of One-Way and Two-Way Matching Strategies on the Evolution of Cloud Manufacturing Ecosystems

The supply-demand matching (SDM) strategy is an important part of the transaction mechanism design of cloud manufacturing (CMfg) platforms, which has a significant impact on the evolution trend of cloud manufacturing ecosystems (CMEs). To help CMfg platform operators choose the appropriate SDM strategy, first, the evolution process of the CME was qualitatively analyzed, and the evolution process was divided into three stages: the germination period, the growth period and the stable period. Then, three types of market agent behavior models, service demanders (SDs), service providers (SPs) and platform operators (POs), were established, and a multiagent behavior simulation experiment was conducted. Finally, the evolution of CMEs with one-way and two-way SDM strategies for POs was compared and analyzed from three aspects: the overall utilization rate of SPs, the diversity of CMEs and the total output of CMEs. Simulation experiments show that, compared with the CME that adopts the one-way SDM strategy, the CME that adopts the two-way SDM strategy is approximately 33% faster to reach ecological balance, the overall utilization rate is approximately 98.7% higher, the diversity is approximately 6% higher, and the total output is approximately 91% higher. The two-way SDM strategy that comprehensively considers the respective preferences of SDs and SPs is more conducive to the healthy development of CMEs.