I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. More than 90% of the things we buy and consume come by ship. And as you probably know, a glut of shipped items is part of the complex global supply chain crisis now many months in. In his 2021 talk at TED at BCG, supply chain innovator Dustin

Burke offers solutions to the shortages and other supply chain challenges so we can get

and deliver the goods so many of us depend on.

It was a strange feeling, walking into the local supermarket only to find empty shelves.

And most notably, no toilet paper. We didn't have raw material shortages or manufacturing defects,

and we didn't discover new uses for toilet paper. It was panic buying by everyday people. Supply chains just couldn't keep up.

And before we knew it, the rumored shortage became a real one. You remember that, don't you?

Well, maybe not, because I'm not talking about COVID-19. I'm talking about the great toilet paper

shortage of 1973. And it wasn't caused by a

pandemic, but by a joke told by Johnny Carson. But today's supply chain challenges are no joke.

Those problems are real, but they're problems that we've faced and even solved in the past.

A supply chain is the long and often complicated

journey that any item takes before it winds up in your home. Raw materials are mined or grown and

sold to various suppliers. Those suppliers sell them to manufacturers who transform those raw

materials into finished goods. And those finished goods are moved around the world by distributors and carriers

who in turn sell them to retailers, who sell those to consumers as a final step.

Many supply chains are simple, like when you buy strawberries at a local farmer's market.

But some are almost infinitely complex.

In my 14 years working with companies on improving their supply chains,

I've seen many disruptions from natural disasters to pandemics

and geopolitical instability.

And every time the media talks about how, from this point forward,

...