How the Dimensions of Supply Chain are Reflected by Digital Twins: A State-of-the-Art Survey

Transparency of supply chains is important. A more transparent supply chain would help to react in real-time by detecting and solving many issues e.g. production interruptions and delivery bottlenecks. A supply chain digital twin can help to increase the transparency and create an overall more robust and flexible supply chain. With real-time data streams from sensors, a digital twin allows simulation, monitoring, and controlling and provides information about its real-world counterpart. Based on a literature review approach, we analyze academic and industrial application and use cases to identify the current state-of-the-art of supply chain digital twins. Subsequently we develop a classification scheme for supply chain digital twins. The classification scheme provides six different dimensions like scope, actor, asset, flow reference object, performance measurement, and supply chain process that are relevant for digital twins in the context of supply chain.