Today our first company visit was at Medochemie, a Cyprus based company that manufactures and distributes the general version of many medications to European and Asian consumers. Due to the necessity of ensuring the quality of their products, Medochemie is involved in all aspects of the supply chain from raw materials to the finished product delivered to the customer.  Directly, the company takes raw materials and turns them into medicinal products in their specified packaging also made by themselves. Indirectly, the company has strict agreements with suppliers to ensure the quality of their raw materials. Later in the supply chain, there are agreements with shipping industries to ensure that the medicine is kept in the correct conditions (i.e., temperature and humidity). 

Additionally, we were able to go on facilities tour of the company, which explained the new technology that they use to store their products and shipping materials. They use an electronic system to store everything’s location, and then move shelves over to access the required location. This maximizes the space of the warehouse and the amount of material able to be stored. As explained during the tour, Medochemie focused on this maximization at the sacrifice of quick storage and retrieval. I found this to be very interesting, for American companies tend to choose efficiency first. However, I have been finding a pattern in Cyprus of businesses (from small fabric stores to the larger companies) choosing to produce a smaller number of products at a higher quality. In contrast, the United States has the pattern of choosing a larger number of products at a lower quality.

Our second company visit was at the University of Nicosia with Wargaming, a company that manufactures online videogames. Specifically, they have a popular line centralized around WWII warfare, such as World of Tanks. Wargaming has an interesting role in the supply chain, for they really create a product from scratch and sell it straight to the consumer, if you ignore the resources of computers and manual labor. This puts Wargaming in a complicated situation, for they are required to put in ideation, creation, distribution, and advertising. The main issue that Wargaming has in their supply chain is understanding the demand of the consumer, and if they will purchase the finished product once it is a completed video game. Their difficulties arise with creating a cheap prototype that does not cost them millions of dollars, while still creating something that can be testable with users. Additionally, bringing experts in to test the games can be a bad idea, because these people can leak Wargaming’s ideas even after signing NDAs. If the ideas are leaked, then other companies can steal all Wargaming’s hard work and money that has been put into the game so far.