The increasing adoption and investment in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Digital Thread and Digital Twin (DT&T) demand interoperability among models across the organization. Model interoperability is a critical challenge in the development of DT&T due to the diversity of models and standards used in different phases of product or system design life cycle (PLC/SDLC). Moreover, this challenge is further complicated by the complexity of the differences among various organizations and enterprises. This paper proposes an ontology-driven approach to address the challenge of model interoperability and emphasizes the significance of intra-and cross-organizational Enterprise Integration (EI) and trustworthy decision-making in the development of DT&T. The proposed approach investigates models’ interoperability, transformation, and portability and introduces potential research avenues to add explainability throughout the digital model’s lifecycle. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the need for standard evaluation criteria or measurements to evaluate the maturity of EI and to compare different model translation and portability methodologies.