Digital Twins as a Catalyst for Sustainability and Resilience in Manufacturing Systems: A Review from the Supply Chain Perspective

The rapid advent of digital technologies is reshaping the manufacturing landscape, with digital twins (DTs) surfacing as a transformative innovation. DTs, as virtual counterparts of physical entities or systems, hold substantial potential for optimising and overseeing manufacturing processes. This paper provides an in-depth understanding of manufacturing systems DTs from a supply chain (SC) perspective. A three-dimensional framework is introduced embracing DT integration levels, SC structural hierarchies, and SC processes to examine the evolution of DTs. The paper delves into existing studies concerning these dimensions, identifying a shortfall in structural and process embeddedness of DT implementation within manufacturing systems. Additionally, we delve into major performance objectives and challenges inherent in the DT implementation. This paper provides insights to further the understanding and implementation of DTs in the evolving manufacturing and SC contexts.