Multitier Digital Twin Approach for Agile Supply Chain Management

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to introduce Multitire Digital Twin approach for agile supply chain management validated in the research lab. In the long run, the solution will ultimately help to reduce resources costs in production processes and throughput time of the supply chain. The digital twin approach can be applied in the manufacturing company and the supply chain and makes recommendations for making changes to the physical environment to meet the requirements of various specific orders. The goal is to create a digitally customisable flexible supply chain system that will integrate company operations with large collaborative partners.

Design/methodology/approach

– The Multitier Digital Twin approach is validated by modelling of SME company three different levels: business processes, manufacturing processes and work cells operations. The simulation study is performed to evaluate the achieved results. The guidelines are developed to connect and integrate business process level models with workshop and work cell level models.

Findings

The authors defend that the current research will help to create new digital solutions to increase manufacturing flexibility by moving toward the company’s strategic goals directly from the offer preparation stage.

Research limitations/implications

The authors have validated the digital twin approach for agile supply chain management in the fields of manufacturing and logistics. Nevertheless, the proposed approach is adaptable to other fields also, whereas the focal player or project owner selects the best KPIs that support the implementation of the selected strategy.

Practical implications

–The paper includes a feasibility case study for the approval of findings, where small and medium enterprise (SMEs) from the manufacturing field business processes are connected to manufacturing processes and work cell models to achieve a common strategic goal of the company. The study is based on a production company which produce metal grill product. Authors introduce the company digital twin, which include business process level covered by Software AG ARIS architect tool, production process level covered by by Rockwel software Arena tool and workcell level covered by Visual Components tool.

Originality/value

– The main idea is to collect information from the different management levels of the production company of SMEs into a novel Multitier Digital Twin to utilise supply chain resources for the realisation of the tasks of a particularly large project while meeting customer expectations. Also, this work also suggests modelling tools for faster business process modelling and evaluation (assessment) based on the selected strategic goal for each management level.

Keywords: Supply chain management, Business Process Modelling, Sustainable partner network, Digital Twin, Virtual enterprise.