A Collaborative Manufacturing Collective

The extent of collaboration among the companies in a manufacturing network impacts the parametric fluctuations in the network. This is displayed explicitly by the form of the network´s normal modes. By gradually increasing the number of companies that actively collaborate, it is possible to see how the form of the normal modes changes. Initial understanding of this normal mode´s resonant damping was developed using a LOGICS (Learning Object Game Immersed Complex Systems) simulation. A traditional fluctuation-plagued supply chain was transformed into an efficient collaborative manufacturing collective. The improvement is achieved while still honoring the desire of individual companies not to directly share what might be considered proprietary information with another company. The method is extendable and should be applicable to more complex adaptive cloud-coordinated manufacturing networks in which efficiency is obtained by system-wide LOGICS-based feedback to individual companies.