Today was our second day in Cyprus! We met with two companies: Medochemie and Wargaming – both of which could not be more unlike the other!

Medochemie is a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus. Limassol is located on the southern coast of Cyprus, so we had a excellent view of the Mediterranean Sea as we took a bus from our hotel in Nicosia to Medochemie in Limassol. Our visit to Medochemie included a presentation about quality assurance and supply chain management, along with a tour of their warehouse. Quality assurance is important because it not only ensures the safety of the consumer, but also reduces the cost of production in the long run because product recalls are expensive and damage the reputation of the company. Medochemie must meet a set of regulations set by the EU before they can release their products, such as amoxicillin, into the market. In the EU, the set of regulations are known as Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), whereas in the United States, pharmaceutical companies must go through the FDA approval process. Medochemie upholds GMP through enforcing personal training/hygiene, maintaining equipment, making quality agreements for outsourced activities, managing complaints and product recall, conducting self-inspections and quality audits. Therefore, all of these individual checkpoints impact every step of the supply chain.

Effective communication and accurate information is also important in the supply chain because both allow Medochemie to reduce the cost of production. This is reflected by their demand forecasting system. When they observe a rise in demand, they must increase their level of output which can be done by expanding their operations abroad and increasing production capacity. For instance, Medochemie has a hub in Greece to gain access to the rest of the EU through the international airport and land transportation (trucks). Medochemie also has facilities in Vietnam because the cost of electricity and labor is less there than in Cyprus. Medochemie increased their capacity by adopting Compact Mobilized Pallet Racks in their warehouse (which we got to see today). These racks move similar to the way that the bookcases move in the Hillman Library at Pitt by shifting next to each other, creating only one path for employees to access the racks. Medochemie informed us that this system increases their capacity by 80%. I thought this mechanical system was fascinating and perfectly exemplifies the importance of engineering in business.

After meeting with Medochemie, we met with the video game company, Wargaming, at the University of Nicosia. Wargaming is headquartered in Nicosia and was founded in 1998. In 2010, they experienced exponential growth following the release of their most popular game, “World of Tanks”. Since then, they have developed other games such as “World of Warships” and “World of Warplanes”. However, now, they have shifted away from developing new games and are mainly focused on maintaining and adding new content for their current catalog of games. During the presentation, they reminded us of the three fundamental questions in economics: What to produce? How to produce it? Whom to produce it for? These questions then led to a discussion about how a company transforms an idea into a product and “toxic positivity”. We learned that in each step of a game’s development (board game prototype to final product), the game needs the “greenlight” from investors. The “greenlight” is the approval investors give to companies to continue spending the money needed to develop the game which directly impacts their supply chain management. It is important to remember that investors prioritize the game’s ability to generate revenue. Toxic positivity occurs when a company receives the greenlight more easily at each step of the game design process because investors are more willing to trust the company’s ideas. Wargaming combats this issue by receiving feedback from experienced players and encouraging competition among employees.