Today we’re back for some more company visits. Our first stop was Medochemie Laboratories, a drug manufacturer in Cyprus aimed at making quality generic drugs at a low price. We were given insights into how they manage inventory, which helped go along with yesterday’s lesson on forecasting. I was surprised to see that although most drugs are fairly easy to predict – either based on the season (think allergy medication) or with the drug being something prescription that needs to be fulfilled regularly – there are some drugs that are abused for weight loss or other purposes that make predicting the need for certain drugs unpredictable. We were also able to visit their in-house warehouse which had some awesome features that allows for better space management and faster work flow. Firstly, about half of the shelves on the warehouse were on a track system, so the shelves could be close so that only the shelf needing to be accessed would be open at that time, nearly doubling the capacity in this area. Secondly, in-betted in the ground between the shelves were electronic chips that could detect where the fork lift was at any moment along the track. This greatly increased work flow in the export area, and made most of the process fully automated. A lot of these changes were extreme intriguing to me because I had never seen them before and the output difference it produces was noticeable. 

The second visit of the day was to Columbia Ship Management (CSM). This company essentially onboards ships and equips them with a crew and technology that allows them to manage the ships from shore. This process gives Columbia access to hundreds of ships and allows them to manage global shipping for both cargo purposes and also commercial purposes. The software they developed was interact and gave the location, speed, and many other indicators for the ships that allowed the team on land to monitor the status of the ship. It was cool to see that they are very friendly with other ship management companies, and although there is competition, the access to information and willingness to help each other in situations where help is needed was incredible to see. This sector seems very closely knit, and is a compelling industry to join in the future!