Discrete event simulation and Digital Twins in warehouse logistics: a bibliometric and content analysis-based systematic literature review

In Warehouse Logistics (WL), the growing adoption of Industry 4.0 automations coupled with the demand for efficient and almost instantly responsive decision-making has already created a paradigm shift from the traditional Discrete Event Simulation (DES) models into innovative new ones utilizing the inherent functionalities of 'Digital Twins' (DTs), one of today's most disruptive Industry 4.0 technologies. DTs are 'real-world aware' through the creation of exact software replicas of actual systems, allowing the convergence of physical and virtual entities and facilitating real-time responsive decision-making. In this paper, a bibliometric and content analysis-based systematic literature review is performed to explore the adoption, implementation and evaluation of DES and DTs in WL. The authors focus on how and to what extent these two methods are integrated into the various WL theoretical and real-life applications to enhance a plethora of performance factors as well as look into their exploitation, as standalone solutions or in tandem with one another and other modelling and simulation approaches, technologies, algorithms, methods, methodologies and strategies in different contexts and environments. Based on the review results, a conceptual framework is proposed combining the multiple perspectives examined, contributing to the systematization and standardization of the field and pinpointing future research directions.