Tuesday, May 16th
Our first visit of the day was to the Medochemie facilities outside of Limassol. Medochemie is a pharmaceutical company specializing in generics. Their goal is to create affordable, high-quality medicine that is accessible for everyone. So far, they provide products to over 300 million people, they have offices in 20 different countries, and they have 13 total facilities, 9 of which are located in Cyprus. They focus on supporting the community with generic drug production as opposed to trying to create new or high-tech products. To ensure the safety of their products, they use quality assurance and good manufacturing practices to regulate every step of the process. Quality assurance checks the quality of all pharmaceutical products and requires that every step needs to comply and be tested and that all parts must be validated and calibrated. This process also deals with packaging, which is more complex than it sounds due to the differing packaging requirements in every country. In addition to the QA process, Medochemie also uses good manufacturing practice which has procedures in place that employees must follow and document. The reason for GMPs is that consumers have no way to tell if a drug they purchase is safe just by its appearance, so it is the job of the pharmaceutical company to ensure that the drugs will help people and not harm them. It is, after all, a life-or-death scenario.
Medochemie has a complicated role in the supply chain because they do a significant amount of the process in house. They begin with business and budget planning, then move to sales and operations planning, followed by master scheduling and capacity planning, ending with execution and control of distribution. All of these steps occur every few months and are essential to the successful business practices of the company.
Our next visit of the day was to Columbia Ship Management which has a main concern with keeping multi-million-dollar ships safely at sea. The company was founded in 1978 and they have 13 ship management offices, over 400 vessels under management, 19 owned crewing agencies, and 16,000 employees worldwide. CSM is one of the most reputable global ship management companies entrusted by clients globally and with a significant fleet size. One thing that impressed me about CSM was their dedication to their clients. They boast a 100% client retention rate because they are customer focused and are committed to tailor-made client solutions. They also have complete transparency with each of their customers and they provide a comprehensive website and app to allow their clients to have access to their vessels’ information at all times. Giving people the ability to know every detail about their investment seems to really build trust in the company.
After the initial presentation we were shown the emergency room and the control room which were fascinating. The emergency room is like something out of criminal minds. It is a wooden paneled room with a large table where each seat is assigned to a different member of the team. Whenever there is a serious emergency with one of CSM’s ships, the team assembled in person to make a plan to solve it. The control room was also really cool because you can see every ship, they manage on one large map. They have live tracking and statistics on every ship so they can work with the owner and the crew to ensure a successful trip. Overall, Columbia Ship Management was definitely one of my favorite company visits of the trip.
