Digital twin and Value Stream Mapping of Warehousing in Era of Industry 4.0

Abstract

The rapid pace of technological development and high competition make the business employ proper approaches to assess the effectiveness of their value creation process or supply chains. The dynamic business environment enhances the uncertainty and the risk of not meeting the business goals. Warehouses might be able to address some levels of uncertainty such as demand fluctuations. Yet, inventory accumulation may lead to becoming a source of inefficiency from the lean methodology perspective. Therefore, the application of the lean methodology and its well-known method, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), has not received much attention in the warehouse efficiency assessment context. On the other hand, Industry 4.0 refers to the ongoing fourth industrial revolution promoting connectivity and information sharing with some key enabling technologies, including the internet of things (IoT), simulation, and digital twin. The digital twin technology is considered a strategic technology and offers a practical way for a system performance assessment. This paper aimed to introduce an approach that integrates the VSM method with the digital twin. The proposed structured approach can be used for the performance evaluation of a warehouse while adapting to the dynamic nature of warehousing. The developed digital model can be used for real-time warehouse performance monitoring and control when connected with the physical warehouse through communication devices. The proposed approach in this paper is applied to a real case to demonstrate its applicability.