Transforming B2B platforms through interconnected digital twins: Enhancing situation awareness for decision-making

Abstract

Business-to-business (B2B) platforms hold transformative potential for manufacturing by enabling firms to collaborate, share data, and coordinate decisions across interconnected cyber-physical networks. However, many firms struggle to fully leverage these platforms due to bounded rationality, as decision-makers face difficulties in processing fragmented, heterogeneous, and real-time data streams. Interconnected Digital Twins (IDTs) offer a promising technological response to this challenge. By integrating data from multiple sources and simulating dynamic manufacturing processes across organizational boundaries, IDTs create shared, real-time representations of operations that support decision-making in complex B2B ecosystems. Grounded in Endsley's Situation Awareness Theory, this study examines how IDTs support perception, comprehension, and projection in cross-organizational decision-making. We conducted an exploratory qualitative case study of a leading automotive manufacturer, drawing on ethnographic access to its IDT implementation. Our findings show that IDTs enhance situation awareness and support cross-organizational decision-making by consolidating fragmented data and reducing cognitive overload through simulation. The study contributes to B2B platform ecosystem research by identifying IDTs as a technological enabler of digital transformation and demonstrating their role in enhancing situation awareness in industrial ecosystems.