GAP Vassilopoulos Group

Kalimera! Today we visited G.A.P. Vassilopoulos Group, a company that offers complete service packages, like warehouses, distribution, and careers, to companies. The company was founded in 1964 and has over 1500 locations in Cyprus. The G.A.P. stands for George, Aries, and Petros, which were the original founders of the company. Some of the services offered by the group are shipping, logistics, insurance, airlines, hospitality, courier, financial, merchandising, port and airline management, and business technologies. For example, some of the big companies we know of that they provide services for are UPS, DP world, P&O Maritime, and DSV. Since we had already toured the Limassol port, DP World, and P&O Maritime, it was interesting to hear about this company’s part in the operations.

Clearly this company does a lot. The biggest question I had was how they manage to stay on top of things and so well organized, without stretching themselves too thin. We were taught today about the lean SCM strategy, which answers this exact question. Being considered lean is being able to be both effective and agile. As Dr. Vassilopoulos explained, you need to have big volumes spread over a big market. His Supply chain attitude is “grow or die”, which embodies the lean strategy of SCM. Learning about the supply chain and SCM strategies during our predeparture classes does not compare to the presentation we had today. This company explained the supply chain so well, I was able to follow along the whole time and make connections to key words that I had already learned! Andio!