Today we had our latest start yet at 11 am. Because the hotel breakfast only goes from 7 to 10, I decided to go to a shop to get coffee and breakfast. I went to La Croissanterie, where I got a hazelnut croissant, an apple muffin, and a mocha (today was an extremely hot day, so getting a hot coffee was not the best idea). At 11 o’clock, we took a short bus ride over to PWC. We stayed here for a few hours, and watched various business presentations. We were on the ninth floor of the building, and it was very fancy– it was a spacious room with red walls, a bar area, a hologram projecting the logo moving around, and yoga balls to sit on.
The first presentation was from a member of PWC in Germany on connected supply chains. These are circular and autonomous, because of the incorporation of AI that allows for smart logistics flows. The speaker emphasized transparency throughout the supply chain, to allow for integrated end-to-end planning. The use of AI in supply chains allows for prescriptive analytics and decision support. I was surprised to learn that the automotive industry is the biggest digital champion, whereas the engineering industry was much lower on the list. After this speaker, we heard from a speaker from Superhome Center, a company that is in the sector of home improvement and DIY. We learned about the company’s processes, and I was interested to learn about how the pandemic affected this company. All industries suffered losses from the pandemic, but there was also some increase in demand for this company’s products because while people were quarantined in their homes, they began looking more toward home improvement activities.
After this presentation, we were given some refreshments and snacks to tide us over. We then had the option to move about 3 different smaller presentations. I was only able to catch the entire presentation from one of the speakers, and it was more in depth on circular supply chains. The focus of the presentation was demonstrating how to bring used products back into the supply chain instead of just disposing of them. The ways to do this are to reuse, redistribute, refurbish, remanufacture, or recycle. Some examples of products that aid supply chains to do this are Zigzag Global (which is a network that allows people to return products locally instead of across the world), Loop (which is reusing packaging), and Bio-Bean (which is using coffee grounds to make coffee logs to burn instead of wood). This presentation was very interesting because the speaker emphasized the role of the supply chain in all of the products, and the advantages and difficulties that each process of reusing the various examples would pose. After the small presentations, we returned to our hotel at 2:45.
Back in our normal area of Nicosia, we had four hours of free time until we had leave for dinner. I went to the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia (though we went 20 minutes before it was closing), the Shacolas Tower Observatory where we got to view all of Nicosia, and the Cyprus Museum. My favorite part was seeing all of the sculptures of various people and figures of mythology. Following this, we had a group farewell dinner where we had a final mezze. This mezze was similar to the others, with salad, pita and dips, fries, and various meats. I ended the day with eating some ice cream in the Freedom Square with some friends. Only one more day left!
