Maturity Model for Cognitive Twin-Enabled Sustainable Supply Chains

The growing digitalization of supply chains and increasing sustainability requirements create the need for structured tools that assess organizational readiness for Cognitive Twin (CT) adoption. However, existing digital twin and sustainability maturity models rarely integrate technological architecture, governance, and circularity within a unified framework. To address this gap, the study proposes the Supply Chain Twin Sustainability–Cognitive Maturity Model (SCT-SCMM), a novel framework that explicitly integrates governance structures, sustainability objectives, and a hierarchical system architecture into the assessment of Cognitive Twin readiness. Unlike existing models, the proposed framework captures the interdependencies between technological capabilities, decision intelligence, and governance mechanisms across multiple system layers, providing a systemic perspective on sustainable digital transformation. The framework structures organizational readiness through five interdependent layers: Physical, Control, Communication, Decision-making, and Governance, and defines staged maturity levels reflecting progression toward sustainable cognitive autonomy. This layered architecture enables the simultaneous evaluation of operational automation, digital intelligence, and institutional governance as co-evolving dimensions of Cognitive Twin adoption. The model was developed through a structured literature review and operationalized using a hybrid multi-criteria and fuzzy-based evaluation approach, enabling the evaluation of complex socio-technical systems under uncertainty. The framework was applied in an automated product-to-human warehouse case study to evaluate technological, sustainability, and governance readiness. The results demonstrate the model’s ability to identify maturity gaps, reveal inter-layer dependencies, and prioritize transformation pathways toward more resilient and circular logistics systems. By integrating governance, sustainability, and system architecture into a single maturity model, SCT-SCMM extends existing digital twin maturity approaches and provides a transparent decision-support tool for guiding staged Cognitive Twin adoption in next-generation sustainable supply chains.