A Cross-Sector DigiCircular Digital Twin Architecture for Collaborative and Sustainable Manufacturing

Collaborative intelligent manufacturing enables persistent data-synchronised interaction among distributed industrial systems, creating new opportunities for coordinated and sustainable manufacturing. However, sustainability and circular economy objectives are still largely managed. This paper proposes DT2 (DigiCircular Twin-Transition), a federated digital twin architecture for collaborative and sustainable manufacturing that integrates circular economy intelligence, life-cycle sustainability assessment, and cross-sector interoperability into an integrated decision-making framework. DT2 integrates heterogeneous digital twins from agri-food processing, textile manufacturing, logistics, and blockchain-based traceability into a shared decision layer, allowing environmental and circularity indicators to operate as real-time control variables. A unified sustainability efficiency index (SEI) supports cross-sector comparability and multi-objective optimisation of environmental performance, operational efficiency, and economic outcomes. Simulation-based validation, including Pareto-front analysis and Monte Carlo robustness testing (N = 10,000), demonstrated that, relative to the baseline nonfederated configuration, the evaluated DT2 simulation scenarios achieved reductions of up to 30% in environmental impacts, improvements of up to 25% in resource efficiency, extensions of product lifecycles of up to 20%, and improvements of up to 38% in long-term return on investment. Interoperability and trust are ensured through standards aligned federated architecture (ISO 23247, IEC 62890) and blockchain-backed performance verification. By transforming sustainability from reporting into predictive, collaborative control, DT2 advances the collaborative intelligent manufacturing metaverse towards scalable, auditable and policy-ready industrial sustainability governance.