Manufacturing Operations Undergraduate (MP&L) Review

I enjoyed the placement in the sense that I had a good time in the office working with colleagues, and enjoyed getting to know other interns over the summer internship. I did however find myself a bit bored on a day-to-day basis, as I had little work to do due to the workload of my manager and others in the office.

Although I wasn't always trusted with a lot of responsibility on a day-to-day basis, it was stressed that the project I undertook was a valuable piece of work, and I felt that my colleagues treated me as an equal, and were interested to get to know me. I was particularly touched by their gestures on my last day as an intern.

This is probably where the placement falls down most-due to the sheer number of interns, there aren't really enough managers to fully support every student. My manager was extremely busy every hour of the day, and so realistically had minimal time to support me (though that's not to say he didn't take an interest). I was also assigned a mentor, who helped a lot with day to day activities and getting me settled in and was really supportive.

Realistically, not very. While my project required quite a lot of work, and there were various other tasks that took up my time, there was not enough for me to do over the whole 12 week period.

It's difficult to say-I personally would have preferred more responsibility in my position, but unfortunately the placement wasn't really long enough to become appropriately familiar with the systems and other aspects of the role to do most of the important day-to-day tasks. The work I did, however, was necessary rather than made up tasks to keep me busy.

The internship was not really related to my degree in any way whatsoever, so I would have been surprised if I had gained anything directly relevant there. I did however gain some business skills through the eLearning modules that should be useful in the future.

It was a bit odd. The majority of people in the office were quite a bit older than myself, and it was a mostly male environment. The area I was in was quite lively and chatty (if a bit stressed out), and I thoroughly enjoyed that, but a lot of the rest of the open plan office was quite quiet.

There was really very little efficient communication between recruitment and those in charge of the internship and individual departments. Neither I nor my manager/colleagues were told of various events (such as introductory meetings etc.), and not very much was set up to accommodate interns when arriving (access to systems, buildings, software etc.). The volume of interns taken in is high, and they are spread across a number of departments that are wildly different, so you can see where the challenges lie.

I believe there were more opportunities for training and development for those based on non-manufacturing sites, as a few eLearning courses (at level 1) was all that was really provided to us in manufacturing roles. It's possible that more was available, but this was never really communicated, and it certainly wasn't obvious where to look.

There has been some confusion as to the availability of graduate roles following our placement, but this is mostly to do with decisions higher up in the company. While I really admire JLR and think they provide a lot of good prospects for employment, the way the area of the business I was in was run put me off accepting a job there (if I am offered one).

Yes-although other interns were based across various sites, the majority lived in the same place (a student halls of residence in Coventry). This afforded a good environment for socialising with other interns (although this was entirely down to other students themselves). In terms of socialising related to work, there wasn't really anything (in large part down to the fact that work finished quite early and almost everyone drove to and from work).