Cyber Manufacturing Mesh Network: a Manufacturing Capability-Aware Supplier Decision Support Framework

Traditional manufacturing supply chains face growing disruption risks due to limited visibility into supplier manufacturing capabilities, insufficient transparency in capability evaluation, and limited adaptability to dynamic production changes. This paper proposes a Cyber Manufacturing Mesh Network (CMMN), a manufacturing capability-aware supplier decision support framework designed to address these challenges. In the proposed framework, each supplier is characterized by a quantified manufacturing capability profile derived from historical production data. Based on these profiles, the framework identifies technically feasible suppliers, supports multi-supplier task allocation, and enables reassignment under disruptions. Unlike conventional supply chain approaches that rely primarily on cost- and time-based criteria, the proposed framework explicitly represents fine-grained manufacturing capability compatibility using multi-modal production data, including geometry, material, and tolerance information. An illustrative operational scenario is presented to demonstrate how the framework supports supplier identification, allocation, and disruption recovery in manufacturing supply chains. (c) 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).