Abstract
Since Covid and the following bottlenecks in material supply companies are highly sensitive regarding the vulnerability of their supply chains. Delayed deliveries, failures of sub-suppliers, and supply shortages are only a few of the problems arising over the last years in global markets. This work deals with the potential of graph database systems in terms of increasing transparency and resilience in manufacturing supply chains. For the research, an open-source solution is tested for its functionality so that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can also benefit from the advantages of such systems. The goal is to find out if such systems are suitable in the case of multi-tier supply chains. The more sub-suppliers there are between the manufacturer and the raw material producer, the more difficult it is for a company to manage the entire supply chain. In this work, the supplier network is exemplarily visualized using a NoSQL database focusing on graph-based data models. Queries are designed and tested facilitating the user to search for specific criteria and critical situations within the supplier network. The results in this research suggest that there is considerable potential for increasing resilience as supply chain managers can use such tools to act based on the results instead of reacting when problems are already materializing along supply chains.