In a new book, MIT professor Yossi Sheffi, the director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, takes a closer look at supply chains, how they operate, and how new technology might change them.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many consumers rarely thought about supply chains, which seemed to seamlessly deliver goods to stores and doorsteps. But pandemic-era disruptions lifted the curtain on this seeming magic, according to Sheffi, revealing “the underlying structure, unavoidable complexity, and massive scale of modern supply chains.”

In this excerpt from Sheffi’s book, we explore how even the most basic of products — bananas — go through quite a journey to appear on grocery store shelves.