Today was a day where we visited two businesses in completely different fields: pharmaceutical medication and ship management. Kicking off our day, we visited Medochemie Limassol, which is a manufacturer of generic drugs and over-the-counter medicine. They are an international company, manufacturing in both Cyprus and Vietnam and selling to nations all over the world. This was fascinating to me, as the difficulty of compiling laws in all of the different nations is immense. An interesting system that they have is having a designated person who guarantees the quality of medicine exported to a nation, and if the quality is not sufficient, then that person is personally liable. This is an extremely valuable system in my eyes, as it prevents the diffusion of responsibility for quality, as just one person is ultimately responsible. What was also covered extensively in the presentation was the standard for producing medicine and the reasons for this. It is devastating for a pharmaceutical company to have defective medicine, as well as awful for patients. They demonstrated this to us by going through the Lubeck disaster, where defective vaccines caused 73 deaths, and the Thalidomide disaster, where countless children were maimed and died. Seeing the photos of these disasters was disturbing to me, but it emphasized the importance of achieving perfection in this industry. The logistical side of Medochemie was also very unique. They practice both made for order, where they only produce medicine when a company has requested it, and stockpiling, where they will essentially reproduce medicine. These two different styles of logistics were very much reflected in their warehouse, where they had one side that used shelves that came together to maximize space, while the other side was more traditional to make it easier to access for made-to-order products. The main thing that stuck with me from Medochemie was how important their work is for the working class. Often times, the main thing holding people back from getting their illnesses treated is not that medical technology has not progressed far enough, but rather that they cannot afford the medication. Because of the work of firms like Medochemie, more and more people are able to access medication that significantly improves their quality of life, and I’m grateful that we got to see the work that went into producing such low-cost medicine.

The other firm that we visited today was Columbia Ship Management. CSM is a firm that specializes in managing the whole operation of container vessels, all the way from emergency management to figuring out how to crew the ships. What I found very interesting about their business model is that they make it so the owners of the ship have to do literally nothing except pay the bills. This is fascinating to me, as it makes it so the owner of a vast fleet of ships could theoretically have no idea how they work and instead just know how to pay the bills. What was also extremely interesting was the amount of discretion that the captains of ships have when dealing with CSM. If a captain disagrees with CSM, they can simply disregard what they say completely, which I view as a good thing as it forces CSM to always have justification behind what they are doing. Finally, it was fascinating listening to the lecture about their emergency management. The main takeaway I got from their emergency management is the importance of having a plan in place even when the events are unpredictable. CSM effectively does emergency management because they have a strict plan in place for who is where, who does what, and when responsibilities change. This is important for every business to have, as no matter what industry you are in, emergencies can and will happen. Overall, today was a very full day where I was able to walk away with a better understanding of SCM as well as a deeper understanding of the importance of planning.