Vehicle quality co-ordinator Review

Overall my placement year was fantastic it developed me in the areas that i knew i was laking in such as negotiating and people skills. Learning all about the production system at plant oxford was so interesting and being part of that system was awesome.

My department TO-501 have more students in the office than full time employees so there is a lot of pressure to perform well in your role. This i think makes the job a lot more rewarding because there is no back ups if you mess up its on you, if you succeed its because of you also.

I had a hand over period when i started for 1 month, which was enough to learn what to do. From then on it was just about applying the skills and knowledge i had quickly learnt. Even after the hand over period the senior members of my department were always there to help, all you had to do was ask.

In a normal month i was extremely busy complete a lot of different task, very rarely leaving work on time. The main purpose was to "handshake" faults to the relevant fault owners (body in white, assembly or paint) and steering solutions through time dependent reports. When i wasn't do this i would be attending meetings for my boss or creating visual aids on fault count or area, amongst other things.

A lot of responsibility is given to the students, if the students didn't complete their job well the department wouldn't of functioned simple as. There are certain tasks that students new how to do but senior's not as much. A example would be throughput of the car, it is the students responsibility to guide the car with faults through audit and out of audit on time so that the customer gets their car on time. This is one of the main targets of the plant, if the student doesn't take note, cars are leaving audit late then time damaging the customers conception of the company.

Personally one of the main things i struggled with in engineering was the negotiating and people skills part of the job. This role has massively developed that side of my understanding, due to working with literally hundreds of different employees i am now very comfortable working and being confident with complete strangers. This role also helps apply CAD knowledge as you will often have to interpret drawings for specs of gaps and profiles on BIW panels. In addition like with any placement i will be going back into my final year with a totally different way of thinking. I know the end goal of my degree now and this focusses me to do really well in my final year so i can get a grad job at places like BMW.

The people in the office i worked with were really good, serious when we all had to be but when there wasn't much on people knew how to take a joke, It really was a very pleasant place to be. The working relationship i had with my boss was perfect, i knew my place but didn't feel completely undermined or intimidated at any point.

From my point of view the placement was well set up, everything went to plan. My first week was full of all the health and safety presentations you'd expect and multiple tours around different parts of the huge plant. My final week i had my closing interview which all seemed very well planed. you'd expect this from a large company.

The knowledge that was invested into me would help with completing work for BMW e.g. the programmes they use and the way everything is communicated, I'm not too sure this would help me with other jobs as it is a very niche way of thinking. But in terms of developing my speaking, planning, negotiating and technical skills it helped a lot.

Working for BMW was great, i like the idea of working for such a large company it seems so appealing. I think i would work for them but in a another role, maybe more of a design based role in Munich rather than in production in oxford.

Social scene amongst the students was good, we had football on a Wednesday and then would be out for drinks around oxford on a Thursday usually. So it was much better than i thought, it helps that there were a lot of students on placement in oxford.

I live at my parents house as they live very close to oxford so i didn't have to pay rent, from my understanding oxford is very expensive to live in but the night life is good. The bars are better than the clubs in my opinion.

The bars are better than the clubs in my opinion. Work would go out for the summer and christmasy shut down. Drinks were all paid for by the department so it was a very good night last time. it also means your can speak to people who you may never encounter at work because your work means you never cross paths.

There were, football was the main one that i was involved in, i didn't really get involved in other activities apart from the nights out on Thursdays.