BASF SE Transforms Global Value Chain Analysis with Neo4j
World's largest chemical producer builds WeDecide platform to analyze complex global value chains in seconds
1.5 billion
nodes in BASF’s Neo4j graph database
1,800
product and business strategists empowered by access to WeDecide
87%
of supply chain leaders say their organizations have invested significantly in building resilience (EY)
BASF produces the essential chemicals that enable modern life. From agricultural fertilizers feeding billions to specialized polymers advancing medical research, BASF’s production network touches nearly every industry worldwide. But coordinating 230 manufacturing sites and 70,000 suppliers demands more than traditional planning tools can handle.
“A single change in production schedules creates thousands of downstream effects. Each division could examine their own part of the value chain, but without much upstream or downstream visibility.”
The company’s existing systems forced executives to spend weeks piecing together data to answer questions: How would raw material price changes affect margins? Which products should move between facilities in case of plant or material shortages? What production adjustments could protect against supply disruptions?
With the help of Neo4j’s Professional Services BASF has built WeDecide to support value-based decision making and to cut through this high complexity. WeDecide is an analytics platform powered by a Neo4j graph database that maps millions of connections between materials, costs, and production processes. It transforms weeks of analysis into seconds, giving leaders immediate insight into how decisions flow across the network.
“For the first time, we could see our entire value chain as one connected system,” says Monasterio. “Neo4j made it possible for us to model and understand these interdependencies.”
Mastering Complex Value Chain Analytics
87% of supply chain leaders say their organizations have invested significantly in building resilience — yet one in five leaders admit they’re not prepared for shortages that could cause big supply chain disruptions, according to a recent study by Ernst & Young LLP. In today’s volatile market, even a small disruption can cascade through global supply chains, threatening business continuity.
“Before WeDecide, producing analyses within spreadsheets and traditional databases took a lot of time. The process was really inefficient,” says Monasterio.
Relational databases struggle to handle the complexity of modern supply chains. Their rigid structure requires joins between tables for materials, suppliers, manufacturing steps, and finished products. As networks grow more intricate, performance deteriorates.
Neo4j’s graph database offers a different approach: it natively models relationships between supply chain elements, making it easy to trace material flows and adapt to changing supplier relationships.
BASF first tested a Neo4j graph database in 2019 as part of a project that analyzed bills of materials to optimize production costs and pricing. Several factors influenced BASF’s decision to choose Neo4j:
- Ability to model and traverse complex data relationships across the company’s intricate network of interdependencies
- Scalability and performance managing approximately 1.5 billion nodes
- Queries in seconds vs. minutes that could only be achievable via graph technology
WeDecide combined data from BASF’s SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other systems to analyze product margins and costs, equipment capacity, and asset profitability. The solution delivered more efficient and trustworthy analytics than the spreadsheets decision-makers had previously relied on.
“Our graph allowed product and business strategists to better understand relationships between many different factors using large volumes of current data. We evolved from more limited retrospective analyses to powerful instant visualizations and forecasts for a global portfolio,” says Monasterio.
Real-World Impact: Navigating Europe’s Energy Crisis
BASF’s WeDecide platform proved invaluable during the 2022 disruption of Europe natural gas supplies, one of the most impactful energy crises in recent history. Using WeDecide, BASF could:
- Identify products and value chains dependent on natural gas.
- Model natural gas pricing and profitability scenarios.
- Make quick—and well-informed—decisions about plant operations and production allocation.
- Determine which products to source externally.
“With WeDecide and Neo4j, we provided a common methodology and a single source of truth. Everyone could look to the same results for joint decision-making. Business users get a response within seconds in WeDecide. The accelerated modeling cycles ultimately saved a week or two in making strategic decisions.
1,800 product and strategy leaders at BASF now rely on WeDecide to guide critical business decisions.
“Our Neo4j graph investment has paid for itself many times over,” says Monasterio. “We see the value in greater agility and progress toward our goals. More and more business users are eager to access WeDecide and tap into the benefits of our data graph.”
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