Manufactring Undergraduate Review

I enjoyed the opportunity to meet different people, gain insight into manufacturing at the company and some of the opportunities later on in the placement such as the Undergraduate Question Time were very valuable.

I felt quite valued by my colleagues because of some of the responsibility I was given, as well as the fact that they tried to make my placement interesting by setting up tours of other parts of the site.

I didn't have that much support from my manager/supervisor as they were quite busy and the nature of the timing of the placement meant that my manager was away for three weeks, reducing the time available for scheduling progress meetings.

I went through phases of being quite busy and then not having anything at all to do because the department I was working in were preparing for an audit and so didn't have the time to set me work that I could get on with independently.

I was given a lot of responsibility in my first department which I enjoyed, and I also appreciated the fact they trusted me to get on with things. I had a small amount of responsibility in my second department, but not as much, partly due to the fact that I didn't have the technical experience or authority required to carry out a lot of the work.

I was able to work more independently in this placement then I had previously, which will be beneficial when working on my research project this year. However the technical skills and knowledge I picked up are completely unrelated to my degree but would be useful if I worked in manufacturing again.

The placement wasn't that well organised as I ended up in the wrong department to begin with, then when I was finally moved to the correct one, I didn't have a main project to work on.

I regularly met up with the other students on undergraduate placements for lunch on site and because we lived near each other, it was easy to organise social events amongst us outside work hours as well.