Methods and systems for generating supply chain representations

A computer implemented method comprising:

• receiving by a computer a set of information;
• identifying by a computer one or more of a supplier, a commodity, and a customer from the set of information;
• generating by a computer an instantiated query for execution by at least one search engine on an external database, the instantiated query comprising a supplier entry, a commodity entry, and a customer entry corresponding, respectively, to the identified supplier, commodity, and customer in the set of information, wherein the instantiated query comprises the elements:
• “{c1}{r}{t}{c2}”;
• wherein c1 is a first entity name, c2 is a second entity name, r is a relationship type, t is a commodity type, and the elements c1, r, t, and c2 are coupled with a linguistic indicia indicating a supply chain relationship;
• determining by a computer the absence of any of a supplier, a commodity, or a customer from the set of information and generating and inserting a placeholder for each item absent from the set of information;
• sending by a computer the query;
• receiving by a computer a set of supply chain information;
• generating by a computer a supply chain data structure based at least in part upon the received set of supply chain information;
• and
• transmitting by a computer the supply chain data structure.

A computer system comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory communicatively coupled to the processor;
• a program stored in the memory, the program when executed by the processor comprising computer executable code adapted to:
• receive by the computer system as an input a set of company names C, a set of commodity types T, the computer system further comprises a set of query templates Q and a set of relationship types R, wherein at least one query in the set of query templates Q comprises the elements:
• “{c1}{r}{t}{c2}”;
• wherein c1 is a first entity name selected from the set of company names C, c2 is a second entity name selected from the set of company names C, r is a relationship type selected from the set of relationship types R, t is a commodity type selected from the set of commodity types T, and the elements c1, r, t, and c2 are coupled with a linguistic indicia indicating a supply chain relationship;
• receive by the computer system a set of information;
• identify by the computer system one or more of a supplier, a commodity, and a customer from the set of information;
• generate by the computer system an instantiated query for execution by at least one search engine on an external database, the instantiated query comprising a supplier entry, a commodity entry, and a customer entry corresponding, respectively, to the identified supplier, commodity, and customer in the set of information;
• and
• determine by the computer system the absence of any of a supplier, a commodity, or a customer from the set of information and generating and inserting a placeholder for each item absent from the set of information;
• a transceiver for sending the instantiated query and receiving a set of supply chain information;
• a supply chain generation module for generating a supply chain data structure based at least in part upon the set of supply chain information;
• and
• a transmitter for transmitting a signal comprising the supply chain data structure.