Today was an early start, as we all boarded the bus for Limassol at 8AM. It was cool to see the stark contrast between the Old City of Nicosia I had been introduced to, and the more resort-like coastline of Limassol. We rolled up to the facilities of Medochemie, a Cypriot pharmaceutical manufacturing company, and I was impressed by their number and size. We had a great and informative presentation from some of Medochemie’s upper level staff, followed by a period of questions and discussion. We then were treated to a facilities tour of their warehouse. Afterwords, we headed back to UNIC’s campus in Nicosia, where we got lunch and then waited for a presentation by Wargaming, a global gaming company with headquarters (pictured) based in Cyprus. We received the presentation from one of the company’s main game developers, who described the necessary production steps to build a successful game. Finally, we headed back and I lead a small group of us to the Sawa Syrian Restaurant which was a great call. It had good food, affordable prices, and an amazing environment. It was another good day, although I’m pretty tired.

Some reflections for Medochemie: It was cool today to get a deeper look into two supply chains that aren’t always the immediate ones to come to mind, the first being Medochemie’s pharmaceutical supply chain. They discussed how Medochemie was benefited in some ways by COVID despite its negative affect in other areas. For instance, they actually saw increased demand for their product due to global concerns for personal health. However, it was crazy to hear that due to the supply chain disruptions of both the pandemic and the Russian invasion, Medochemie had an acquisition lead time of 65 weeks from one of its suppliers. That’s insane! They have to effectively judge the quantity and price of supplied materials more than a year before they can get them. I also thought it was intriguing from a supply chain side that despite selling the same product, dozens of different packagings needed to be used depending on the countries. This is to ensure effective specialized marketing as well as to ensure health and safety information is provided clearly in different languages. While viewing their warehouse facility, I learned about the different types of storage: fast-paced, slow-paced, and reserve (or satellite as they called it). Essentially the fact-paced is for good that are in constant use and can be easily accessed. Slow-paced is more efficient in terms of usage of capacity but the goods stored here are only accessed periodically. Reserve storage simply replenishes the other two when they run out.

Reflections for Wargaming: Wargaming is another less commonly thought of supply chain because it occupies a digital space. It is an “Idea Business” where ideas are turned into playable products. It was easy to see though that “Toxic Positivity,” a phrase for describing overeagerness, is common in the gaming industry. This means that companies are too quick to greenlight certain games and ideas even though they are unlikely to succeed. To combat this it was suggested to promote competition in order to better weed out mistakes and overvaluing. There was also the concept of feature creep, where developers keep adding new feature in order to make a game more attractive, but forget the sneakily increasing costs. By closing the gap between executives, developers, and consumers, this issue can be resolved.

Today was a day packed full of valuable information about the supply chains in different industries although it definitely wore me out. Tomorrow we are visiting the port in Limassol which I am pretty excited about, but I will make sure to get some good rest first.