For day 3 of our trip we visited 3 companies. The first company we visited was Bernard Schulte Shipmanagement Training Center (BSM). The main service they provide is training for a variety of activities which includes shipping (captains and marine engineers), 3rd party services (water sports operation, diving, etc), and cooks. For the training, the students either do it on zoom or stay in the dormitories in the building. For their training they are an approved training center from the government and teach according to the STCW. While there, we were able to try some of the simulations that the captains go through which was very interesting.

The next company visit was with another shipmanagement company called Columbia Shipmanagement (CSM). This company has a bunch of services in the maritime industry including shipmanagement, commercial, finance, logistics, energy, and technology. With this wide range of services they have 20,000 sea bearing employees and 2,000 on land employees. Their two main services are in shipmanagement are training the crew and logistics, which includes performance monitoring. We were able to meet employees who worked with performance monitoring. It was very interesting because most of their backgrounds were in both business and engineering. Something that inspired me in this company was their risk analysis service. I am planning to go into risk management and didn’t realize how many different industries I can go into.

The last company we visited was Medochemie. They are a pharmaceutical company which focuses on manufacturing and distributing generic drugs. The lecture at Medochemie was about their supply chain management. The planning process was the most important for them so they can fulfill all their customer’s needs by the time they need it. The four main parts of their planning process were a strategic plan, a tactical plan (sales and operations), an operational plan (scheduling, material scheduling, detailed scheduling, capacity planning, order release), and execution. The Medochemie building we were at had a huge warehouse where 7,700 pallets of pharmaceuticals could be stored. We learned about their distribution process and the machines they used to move the 500 pallets they usually ship out a day. I was inspired by how detailed supply chain management can get, and I am now excited to take a class in it!