Digital Twins to improve supply chain efficiency and resilience: literature review and research potential

In today’s increasingly complex global environment, supply chain management faces the dual challenge of ensuring efficiency while building resilience. Efficiency remains critical for competitiveness, cost management, and customer satisfaction. However, resilience has emerged as an equally crucial priority due to the high cost of disruptions. Digital twins are depicted as a promising innovative solution to support decision-making in supply chain and operations management. This study examines the role of digital twins in enhancing both supply chain efficiency and resilience, providing a structured analysis of the research landscape while identifying research gaps, trends, and potential future directions. A literature review is conducted to present a comprehensive overview of the research fields, summarizing existing work with a focus on the most recent and advanced applications in supply chain management over the past decade. Future research could focus on the potential of digital twins for supply chain and operations management under extreme situations or within the context of crisis logistics management.