Today we visited GAP Vassilopoulos, a Cypriot service provider in the shipping industry. GAP was founded in 1964, operate in 10 countries, and has 1500 employees. GAP started off as just shipping, but has evolved into transport and logistics, business solutions technology, airline logistics, financial services, business to business trade, and acquisition. They even operate a German navy base, conducting all port operations and even food services, an all inclusive service provider for the port. Another service of theirs is customs documenting for international trade. In the topic of international trade, they also help as an accredited travel agency. A more environmentally friendly solution they provide is water cleaning services, depolluting the waters, primarily the Mediterranean. Another service they perform is working with UPS as their courier for all of Cyprus, so any UPS services that come in and out of the Connery are managed by GAP.

GAP embodies just about he entire supply chain in their services. Dr. Vassilopoulos discussed many of he supply chain management concepts that GAP uses in their business dealings. The first concept he mentioned was the balance between using lean and agile chains. Lean supply chains take full advantage of economies of scale, and bulk movement of product. Lean supply chains try to standardize everything they do to save time and thus money, gunning for the most efficient production possible. On the other hand, an agile supply chain is one that can quickly adapt to any sudden obstacles that arise. GAP’s way of achieving both of these is using a lean supply chain, but with excess safety stock so they can be more flexible. Another topic he touched on was visibility, or transparency in all aspects of the supply chain. Dr. Vassilopoulos believes that a strong supply chain is one that can, at any moment in time, easily tell where any product is and when it is scheduled for delivery, arrival, and predict when it will arrive at all locations until it reaches the final destination.