Today, myself and the group went on three tours of various companies in Limassol. First off, we went to Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, where we met with a training director at their Limassol location. He explained how seafarers get trained and showed us videos of the process, and explained all of the different roles that crew members may have on the different vessels that the company owns. He delved into the branches of BSM, which even included catering and hospitality for cruise ships, and the people who fix the boilers and engines on cargo vessels, which is what the lecturer did while he was at sea as a mechanical engineer chief for the company. It was extremely interesting to learn about all of these different divisions within the companies, and learning about all the different processes of work on each type of boat. There are so many variables and factors to make sure a vessel is running smoothly.

Next, we went to Columbia Ship Management (CSM). This company was very similar to BSM, with minor differences such as them offering services to yachts and private jets as well. We toured their operations room that had a bunch of different simulators and things to visualize how all the moving parts of ship management came together to form an efficient process. It was interesting to draw parallels between the two ship management companies and be able to once again see how operations worked within the control rooms and through the people who actually work on the ships.

Finally, after a lunch break, we arrived at Medochemie, a drug manufacturing company. This company really dived into its supply chain, explaining the process of how drugs are manufactured, stored, and shipped out to pharmacies. In a day alone they move up to 500 pallets worth of drugs, and they talked about their extensive cycle of drug development and testing to make sure it is ready to be shipped out. We got to tour the warehouse, a massive building with boxes upon boxes of various medicines stacked up in alphabetical order. Overall, it was a very interesting day of tours and this was a great introduction to how the rest of the company tours will go here in Cyprus.