Use of generative AI to identify multi-level supply chains

Purchasing & Finance Department in Supply Chain Management

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (www.fraunhofer.de) currently operates 76 institutes and research facilities in Germany and is the world's leading organization for application-oriented research. Around 30,000 employees work on the annual research volume of 2.9 billion euros.

Who are we?
At Fraunhofer IML, we develop digital and sustainable solutions for the key issues in logistics. Today, logistics is the leading industry and the leading developer of technological innovations. Digital platforms, data security and open source software, artificial intelligence, autonomous robots and blockchain, digital value creation, resilience, smart finance, sustainability and compliance: these are just some of our topics. They show just how diverse logistics is. Our aim is to get people and things moving in a sensible way - economically, ecologically and socially. In doing so, we rely on the collaborative interaction between science and business. Because together we can simply achieve more. We are always concerned with real problems from practice. We develop concrete applications and solutions that are then "made to fly" in companies - whether large corporations, SMEs or start-ups.

What you do with us

The aim of the Master's thesis is to investigate the potential of Generative AI (GenAI) to identify and analyze multi-level supply chains. Many companies have limited transparency regarding their indirect suppliers. At the same time, there is a growing need for a better understanding of their own supply chains, for example for supply chain risk management, regulatory requirements or sustainability assessments.
Generative AI opens up new opportunities to automatically evaluate publicly available information and draw conclusions about supply chain structures. Initial exploratory tests show that GenAI can already be used to reconstruct significant parts of a company's direct supply structure.
Against this background, an AI-supported approach for reconstructing multi-level supply chains is to be developed and systematically investigated as part of the master's thesis. The work is carried out in cooperation with an industrial partner, whereby real supply chain structures are analyzed and the results are validated in a practical manner.

Have we piqued your interest? Then apply online now with your detailed application documents. We look forward to getting to know you!

Leon Krebs, M.Sc.
Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML

Corporate Logistics department
Purchasing & Finance in Supply Chain Management department
Phone: +49 69 668118-379
Email: leon.jonathan.krebs@iml.fraunhofer.de
Web: www.iml.fraunhofer.de/de/abteilungen/b2/einkauf_finanzen_supply_chain_management.html