Most of us still clearly remember March of 2021, when the Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, ran aground while transiting the Suez Canal. The accident, caused at least in part by high winds and poor visibility, immediately closed one of the world’s busiest and most important shipping routes. For six long days, the world watched, fascinated, as multiple efforts to refloat the ship failed. Shipping traffic backed up on both ends of the Canal, while many companies chose to reroute cargo around the horn of Africa. When the Ever Given was finally refloated, it made headlines worldwide.

Coming on the heels of significant supply chain disruptions that had begun only a year earlier, the grounding of the Ever Given captured global attention, underscoring the potential for unforeseen events to create big challenges for global supply lines. It was also a stark lesson in the interconnectedness of the global economy. We quickly learned that disruption to shipping routes doesn’t just impact the goods moving through those routes at that moment. Energy prices can be impacted, creating a cascade of pricing impacts through a huge range of goods and materials. Port operations thousands of miles from the scene can get out of sync, as narrowly coordinated schedules must be revised on the fly. Quickly, manufacturers far down the value chain can find themselves looking at empty loading docks or facing serious sticker shock on goods and materials.