Digital Twin architectures for remote monitoring and control in CNC manufacturing systems: a systematic review

Abstract

Digital Twin (DT) technology has become a key enabler of smart manufacturing; however, its application in Computer Numerical Control (CNC) systems remains largely limited to monitoring and predictive tasks rather than real-time control. This limitation is particularly critical for remote operation of multi-axis CNC machines, where latency and synchronization directly affect control performance. This paper presents a systematic review of Digital Twin architectures for CNC machine tools, focusing on their suitability for remote monitoring and control. A PRISMA-based methodology is adopted to ensure a transparent and reproducible study selection process. The selected works are analyzed from an architectural perspective, considering system structure, communication protocols, synchronization strategies, and control integration. The results indicate that most existing implementations are not designed for time-critical closed-loop control and exhibit significant latency constraints. Cloud-based architectures typically introduce delays ranging from tens to hundreds of milliseconds, whereas edge-based approaches reduce latency to a few milliseconds, highlighting a trade-off between scalability and real-time performance. The study identifies key research gaps and emphasizes the need for hybrid edge–cloud Digital Twin architectures capable of supporting reliable and low-latency remote CNC control.