July 24 2026
Building the Smart Backbone of Europe's Semiconductor Supply Chains
How SC4EU's Work Package 2 is turning raw industrial data into trusted, shared knowledge
Europe's semiconductor industry runs on complex, fragmented data — from factory floors to global trade flows. Work Package 2 (WP2) of the SC4EU project tackles this head-on by building the Digital Reference: a shared “semantic map” that lets different systems, companies, and tools understand each other's data the same way.
A smarter, more connected knowledge model
Over the past year, the Digital Reference grew significantly — adding new concepts around supply chains, planning, and forecasting, while a redesign made it more modular and easier to maintain. A brand-new Quality Management module, developed with industrial partners, now supports complaint handling, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement — extending the model's reach across manufacturing and supply chains alike.
Ask it a question — in plain language
One of the most exciting developments: the Digital Reference Explainability Tool now uses Large Language Models. Instead of learning complex query languages, users can simply ask natural-language questions, and the system translates them into precise, ontology-aware searches — with built-in validation and fallback mechanisms to keep answers accurate and reliable. Alongside it, OntoQuest (a gamified tool for collaborative vocabulary improvement and concept curation) and OntoLearn (guided learning and structured exploration) make the knowledge base easier to use for technical and non-technical users alike.
Turning trade data into demand insight
WP2 also built out the True Demand Knowledge Graph — combining anonymised survey data from the Multi-Party Computation platform with external contextual datasets, including international trade and export data. Using export data from the United Nations Comtrade database, the team built a dedicated Market Knowledge Graph, supported by a Market Ontology covering trade flows, product categories, market segments, technology nodes, geographical regions, and temporal dimensions relevant to semiconductor supply chains. For the 2024 dataset alone, the resulting Market Knowledge Graph already contains approximately 60,000 trade instances and nearly 485,000 RDF triples — a rich, semantically structured foundation for forecasting, trade monitoring, and decision-support analytics. The full methodology and validation results are documented in Deliverable D2.3, “Report on Semantic Data Mapping and Data Integration.”
Secure by design
Working with SAP, WP2 introduced a Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)-based Identity Provider to support secure user onboarding, role-based access control, and Single Sign-On across all connected SC4EU applications. Authorised organisations and users can access multiple platform services using reusable digital membership credentials, while anonymous survey submission through voucher-based verification and progress on standards-based verifiable credentials further strengthen privacy and interoperability.
What's next
Looking ahead, WP2 will continue extending and refining the Digital Reference, improving ontology explainability and AI-assisted semantic-engineering tools, and expanding the True Demand Knowledge Graph with additional contextual data sources — strengthening the semantic foundation that ties together SC4EU's forecasting, analytics, and platform services.
