Abstract

As e-commerce expands, automated e-fulfilment centers are important for fast and dependable delivery of orders placed online. Robotic equipment performs most of the operational work in these centers, supported by Internet of Things (IoT) that provide real-time operational data. Although these innovations show the principles of Industry 4.0, the transition to Industry 5.0 creates an economic trade-off between resilience and sustainability for the increasing demand for both. The main challenge is to reduce energy use without compromising the ability to manage demand fluctuations. Existing research has typically focused on sustainability or resilience by improving individual processes in isolation, which limits trade-off of resources usage and performance, as well as the interconnected nature of logistic operations. To respond to this challenge, the study proposes a Digital Twin for Joint Sustainability and Resilience Optimization (DT-JSRO) model to help in decision making coupled sustainability-resilience optimization. The DT-JSRO model lets managers run scenarios for performance evaluation in sustainability and resilience while guiding users on the best resource allocation strategies. A simulation experiment proved the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. The model simulates different operational scenarios to produce the best resource allocation strategies that can assist practitioners based on practical priorities, including solely sustainability, resilience or jointly optimizing the two when needed.

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