Data Considerations in Graph Representation Learning for Supply Chain Networks

Abstract: Supply chain network data is a valuable asset for businesses wishing to understand their ethical profile, security of supply, and efficiency. Possession of a dataset alone however is not a sufficient enabler of actionable decisions due to incomplete information. In this paper, we present a graph representation learning approach to uncover hidden dependency links that focal companies may not be aware of. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to represent a supply chain as a heterogeneous knowledge graph with learnable embeddings. We demonstrate that our representation facilitates state-of-the-art performance on link prediction of a global automotive supply chain network using a relational graph convolutional network. It is anticipated that our method will be directly applicable to businesses wishing to sever links with nefarious entities and mitigate risk of supply failure. More abstractly, it is anticipated that our method will be useful to inform representation learning of supply chain networks for downstream tasks beyond link prediction.