Research On Small And Medium-sized Enterprises Purchasing Alliance In Cloud Manufacturing Environment

With the development of global economy, the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. The living environment of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) which are the mainstay of the country is more and more complex and full of challenges. As for SMEs, the only way to survive is updating their competitiveness and promoting their own development. Purchasing is one of activities that can generate revenue, however, the high purchasing cost has restricted the development of SMEs seriously. Since they are often with large number and small scales, distribute widely, purchase multiple but small quantity of products, to solve this problem, the purchasing alliance under the cloud manufacturing environment came into being. By establish the alliances, SMEs can purchase raw materials on a lower purchase price, better quality and better services. Based on cloud platform, SMEs can get access to platform easily, share transaction information quickly, simplify and make the transaction process more transparent, so as to reduce purchasing costs and improve the competitiveness.The concepts of purchasing alliance development in cloud manufacturing environment are introduced in this paper. The combined characteristics of cloud manufacturing and purchasing alliance were qualitative analyzed. The dynamic quantitative analyses of alliance construction were realized by using the cooperative game theory and the related total cost method. We constructed the purchasing alliance frame in cloud manufacturing environment. The purchasing process in cloud manufacturing environment was showed intuitively by the combination of alliance purchasing process and cloud services platform tools. Also, we discussed the main parts of purchasing alliance construction in cloud manufacturing environment, and then analyzed the alliance principles and factors.According to the alliance framework, the dynamic construction method of purchasing alliance was discussed in cloud manufacturing environment. We described the process, operation mode and the structure of the alliance. To realize the horizontal dynamic alliance, we established the member selection index system of SMEs horizontal alliance, and put forward a hybrid method of K-means and improved particle swarm optimization to cluster the enterprises that got the access to the platform. In order to provide a channel for enterprises and suppliers to establish strategic alliances, the supplier selection index system was established, and the particle swarm optimization algorithm for SMEs’ multi purchasing activities to choose the optimal combination of suppliers in the candidate supplier were bring out after platform’ supply and demand intelligent matching being put forward.Based on the theory and method above, we designed the software hardware framework and system model of cloud platform. Taking A company as research background, we studied purchasing alliances structuring issues, demonstrated the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed methodology.