VPI Placement Student Review

I undertook my placement at Cummins Darlington, as a VPI Purchasing Student. VPI stands for Value Package Introduction, meaning that I work in new or limited production engines because of this my main focus throughout my placement has been on the ACE program. Day to day my responsibility involves tracking parts, communicating, and following up with suppliers, holding meetings, sharing key files and documents with suppliers or engineers, request for quotes or request for orders to suppliers. Within tracking parts I monitor their Noun Names, piece price, extended price, lead times, quantity and who is the responsible design engineer. Too maintain this information I will set up calls with many of the engineers to go through their parts to ensure that all their information is up to date.

I became qualified to give tours of the Darlington shop floor facility, through this I have gave multiple tours to suppliers, students, and also internal Cummins employees. This became a grate opportunity for me to talk with people across the business who I would other wise not get an opportunity to speak with as well as being able to question and compare suppliers process and experiences to further understand the engineering world. For my training to give tours of the shop floor I worked on the shop floor for a week rotating on each department spending a day in each department. I gained valuable experience and knowledge through this week as well as seeing how industry 4.0 affected the way process work, hugely impoved my communication skills through meetings with suppliers and Cross buisness functions.

A moderate amount of responsibility, to start with you are just helping out but by the end you are the main contact for a few suppliers there parts become your responsiblity to chase up and ensure these parts arrive on time and makeing sure you get updates from the suppliers about the parts. Theres all ways people to ask for when you get stuck but you are giveing the opportunity to over come these problems your self first and then fall back on help if needed.

Healthy amount of support, as it was all ways available if I needed support but no one was looking over my shoulder making sure things are going how they want.

incredible, people all ways open to help even if your first time speaking with them.

Thoroughly enjoyed, improved my CV massively gave me great opportunity's for improvement and personal development.

Yes

Be friendly, be kind and be inquisitive to ask questions.