https://techmonitor.ai/supply-chain/will-technology-avert-next-global-supply-chain-crisis

If you want to build a house, you’ll need a truss plate. Looking like the combination of a steampunk spider’s web and a miniature bed of nails, these plates are used to secure the meeting points between timber joints. Able to reduce the tendency of the wood to split under pressure, truss plates have become a vital and overlooked component in modern housebuilding. And this summer, they were almost impossible to source in the United States.

“You couldn’t get trusses,” lumber trader Stinson Dean recently told the hosts of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. This meant that houses which needed the plates couldn’t be finished, incurring delays on projects further down the line. Meanwhile, the lumber reserved for those unbuilt houses continued to sit in warehouses as more timber arrived to meet demand for orders made before the shortage. The result was a price crash. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dean is now spending more of his time worrying about the expeditious flow of building equipment. “I’m looking at supply data…talking to my customers about what they’re hearing on lead times on trusses,” he said. “But, [I] didn’t see that one coming.”