Placement Student - Machine Integration Review

I worked at Cummins for about 53 weeks and I have enjoyed all of it. My placement was based in the Darlington Technical Operations in the Machine Integration team. There are loads of opportunities to get involved and a year long placement gives you enough time to really get into the role and make a valuable contribution to the company. I can confidently say that I would take this decision every single time.

My team wasn't a huge team with about 6-7 members throughout the 53 weeks I was in Cummins. The team was going through a transition phase which meant I had the opportunity to work with a number of people. Every single person I worked with was very helpful and willing to make me feel valued. After 53 weeks, I can say that I am going to miss working with my team as they made me feel at home during the placement.

Support and guidance was around whenever I felt I needed it. My manager made it clear at the very beginning that if I needed anything at all, he could be reached (within reason). This put me at ease a lot at the beginning and as the year went by I knew I could count on support and guidance by my manager.

It took me a couple of weeks to get used to the workplace and get all the resources in place. Once this was done, I became extremely busy on a day-to-day basis. I would say there were periods where I was a little too busy, for eg. end of placement and just before I took my holidays. One of my feedbacks at the end of placement was to manage my workload better.

A lot of responsibility. I was treated as a full-time member of the team and this was great to see. I was involved in a variety of projects, both long-term and short-term which made it a perfect balance in terms of learning. I am especially thankful to my manager and my team to trust me to take up the amount of responsibility I was given.

The team I worked in gets involved in a variety of work which uses a lot of engineering disciplines. This will definitely be very handy in my final year and working in industry in the future. Soft skills like presentation, customer relationship management, organisation and data analytics are all skills that can be applied everywhere which are pretty handy to have.

Very professional with regular breaks to catch up on the other various bits. A lot of this depends of the team and your colleagues. The atmosphere is also pretty relaxed and calm and everyone is super helpful both in terms of questions about work as well as other questions about living in a new city.

Very well organised - we were all briefed about the placement structure in the beginning of the presentation. This included five modules, a portfolio and a mid-year catch-up to ensure everything was progressing well.

I did both job-specific and placement specific training. This also included training which wasn't based on the site where my role was based. There was also a constant development process where training needs were recorded and recommended based on your role and your team. All the training I did made me better at my job and I felt that the company did invest a lot in me throughout the year.

Cummins is a big organisation with locations on multiple sites in the UK as well as throughout the world. There are also multiple business units and this gives you more options in terms of future employment prospects. I am doing my final year project with Cummins and we shall see how it goes from there.

Yeah - there were quite a few of us so we did organise social events throughout the year. Most of us lived in Darlington as well which made socialising all the easier. I had a great social life.

Living in the north-east is pretty cheap so that was a huge plus! In terms of socialising opportunities, it was a bit limited in Darlington. However, Newcastle, York and Durham are pretty close so you can easily plan a day out and spend your weekend there. We did visit this a fair few times throughout the year.

Not great but not terrible either. A few clubs in the town centre as well as a fair amount of pubs and bars. Like I said before, York, Durham and Newcastle are pretty close so it isn't inaccessible.

Yep - volunteering is a huge thing in Cummins and students are encouraged to actively participate. There is a Sports and Social Club in the company as well as a badminton, football and cricket club which you can join.