A Comprehensive Assessment Approach to Evaluate the Trustworthiness of Manufacturing Services in Cloud Manufacturing Environment

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is an innovative manufacturing paradigm in which geographically distributed various manufacturing resources are encapsulated into manufacturing services (MSs), and also these MSs can provide users with various services. Users can find and choose qualified MSs to form cliques to help them complete their manufacturing tasks via Internet. Trust makes cooperative endeavors happen. Hence, it is an important problem to evaluate the trustworthiness of MSs in CMfg. In this paper, we present a comprehensive assessment approach to evaluate the trustworthiness of a MS in CMfg. The approach evaluates a MS from both objective and subjective perspectives, named as credit assessment and reliability assessment, respectively. Multinomial logistic regression analysis is presented to assess the credit of a MS, while fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is used to assess its reliability. Finally, a case study is presented and the results show the comprehensive assessment approach is efficacious at the trustworthiness evaluation of a MS.