Robustness of Smart Manufacturing Information Systems under Conditions of Resource Failure: A Complex Network Perspective

Resource failures frequently occur in a smart manufacturing information system (SMIS), which exerts significant impacts on the robustness of the system. From a complex network perspective, this paper develops a fresh methodology for analyzing the robustness of an SMIS suffering from resource failures. First, this methodology divides an SMIS into cyber and physical layers, dissects the resources within these layers and the relationships among these resources. Based on complex network thinking, the methodology then builds a network model incorporating different failure modes and link patterns. Finally, extensive simulations are performed using the case of an appliance manufacturer and one of its suppliers. The results show that an SMIS, along with its cyber layer, exhibits the property of being robust-yet-fragile, and that an assortative link pattern is the optimal link pattern to guarantee robustness for the SMIS under targeted failures.