Utilising Digital Twins for Increasing Military Supply Chain Visibility

The dynamic and complex nature of the military supply chain (MSC) requires effective monitoring ofsupplies and timely decisions to ensure success in combat operations, particularly in the face of unexpecteddisruptions such as inclement weather conditions and terrorist attacks. Although, existing technologies such asRFIDs, Next-Generation Wireless Communication (NGWC) and RuBees are applied MSC, they are not sufficientin ensuring end-to-end visibility across the entire SC. However, digital technologies such as the internet of things,cloud computing, Application Programming Interface (APIs), machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, bigdata, analytics and pervasive computing play a critical role in improving visibility to ensure effective SCmanagement. Hence, the introduction of the concept of digital twin enabled by these technologies creates a digitalreplica of the whole supply chain operations, ensuring adequate end-to-end visibility through real-time data thatensures effective tracking, monitoring and reporting of all SC activities. The focus of this paper is to explore theenabling technologies of digital twin and its implementation to achieve end-to-end visibility in the military supplychain. In this paper, the authors identify the digital twin's tracking and monitoring capability, which will improvesupply chain management by enabling a cycle of continuous adjustment of the SC against unexpected disruptions.