Customer Quality Assurance Placement Student Review

From day to day we conduct investigations into why problems occur with the product that has reached the customer. The team will receive reports from customers whereby they have something wrong with their engine. this report will be investigated into why and what has gone wrong. Then a project will begin into fault proofing the process or the suppliers process to ensure that we will not receive the same defect again. The is a wide range of exposure to the business in terms of cross departmental work and also external like explained with suppliers and customers. The team also conduct a reasonable amount of data analysis to discover and target the larger problems the plant faces and attempt to resolve them.

I have become proficient in Excel, PowerPoint, Power BI which is an automated report to showcase live data and I feel a very useful tool to have. the exposure to different software is large and very useful. this placement benefits for someone who wants to find out something new. I am learning python using the Cummins Learning Center which provides information on a wide range of topics which is where I learnt the Power BI. Then there is the engineering side of the job, there is a wide range of manufacturing processes that I now understand and quality processes to safeguard and provide the best product. The opportunity for learning is large in the role.

As the placement passed around 3 months and my confidence in the systems grew I was able to own each thing I did, the responsibility was solely on me and the exposure to cross departmental work was large. There are lots of smaller projects which you become the leader of and organize the progression of and this is where other teams work with you to provide the best solution. The responsibility that you have is very much up to you I feel. The higher capability you show in the role the more responsibility you are likely to get.

During the beginning there was some support into getting along. It would have been nice to have more support in a program or teaching to follow to gain the skills relevant to this role but due to it being a smaller team this was not in place at the start of my Placement. During my time I believed it was useful to have this type of guidance so I conducted a project to provide this and this guidance is now in place with a step by step of how to do processes that are conducted by the team. I was able to have weekly meetings to ask questions and the team were very easy to ask for support.

The company culture was very inviting, there are a large number of other placement students on site and in other plants in the likes of Milton Keynes who are in the same position as yourself. However, in my team I made better relationships with the actual team and knew the placement students. One highlight was the fact that before I started my placement I was invited to the team work dinner, we had one of these each quarter. Before I had begun my placement I was able to meet the team which I found very thoughtful.

I found my placement very enjoyable. The personal progression that was made during my time was one of my favorite parts. I will be able to go back to university in such a better position to gain good grades than I would have been and I feel like I am quite proud of what I have achieved at the company and it has made me excited for what I could achieve in future. It was a very welcoming environment which made attempting new things easy and there were a lot of new things. It came as a shock to me how little I knew before starting the Job. But now I feel like I have some seriously valuable experiences in industry which I can use towards other projects and future prospect jobs.

Yes

If at first you do not get the Job, it is possible to try again. I found applying for placements difficult and I kept receiving little back from potential employers. I made it through the first round of interviews however didn't manage to make it any further. It was then that I decided I would reach out to the contact I had from the company to see if they had any other Placements available. They were very happy to help and try and find me one and within the next 2 weeks I had a placement after 30 or so applications. I really valued how this went and going into this role proved very lucky with how good this placement has been for me