For Tuesday, we had another day packed with company visits. Today, the first company we visited was Medochemie, a global pharmaceutical distributor. What struck me most about Medochemie was its commitment to quality control. In the presentation, the speakers were very passionate and detailed when it came to quality control. The presenters also went into high detail about their business model for the short and long term. Due to their presentation, I learned a lot about supply and demand in the supply chain.
Firstly, while you might think it is easy to predict demand for the pharmaceutical industry because people will always need medication, it is not. Demand deviates and Medochemie has to carefully calculate its safety stock with a perishable product, having higher stock for higher demand deviations, and lower stock for lower demand deviations. On the supply side, there is currently a huge shortage of medicine. The shortage of medicine paired with large swings in the demand market currently makes it extremely difficult for Medochemie to forecast.
Yet another challenge in the pharmaceutical industry is forecasting. Most forecasting models are time-based. However, the pharmaceutical industry forecasts in a seasonal manner along with other quantitative and qualitative measures. Because of this difficulty in forecasting, Medochemie explained that they were working to implement machine learning into their forecasting. I was very impressed because Medochemie was the first company to speak about using machine learning, AI, or blockchain technology. Overall, I enjoyed Medochemie because their presentation showcased the sides of a global company we have not seen before.
In the second half of the day, we visited Columbia Shipmanagement Company (CSM), a ship management and maritime provider to aid in making sure a ship gets from its starting point to the final destination. CSM is a leader in the industry and one of the best in the world at what it does. I was very impressed with what they showed us. After an informative presentation, we visited a few of their logistical rooms, where we saw and learned about the protocol for emergency situations. In addition, we saw the control room where every ship CSM manages can be monitored. What struck me most was their attitude and measures to become more sustainable. With shipping being such a traditional industry, sustainability usually goes overlooked. However, CSM was extremely detailed in its examples of how they are becoming more sustainable. Many of the other shipping companies we visited were too general and never pointed to a specific example of how they are sustainable.
