Written by: Rob Crossley – Intern Engineer
There is now only three weeks left of my time with the Legacy of Sid team. Looking back, the experience, knowledge, and connections I have gained over the last 2 months have seriously boosted my professional development and given me not only a taste for engineering industry but a real opportunity to develop specialised skills, find my strengths and determine personal career goals.
Work with LOS began rapidly and the level of responsibility and trust I was given throughout this summer has been far more than I ever expected. The informed and detailed support I received daily (close to hourly in the first few weeks) from my colleagues helped me greatly and paved the perfect path of professional and personal development.
The primary focus of my work has been in production line optimization, specifically in beer bottling and kegging lines. In order to be effective at diagnosing production lines and then present to client’s potential cost-effective solutions; I had to learn and implement many diagnostic and practical engineering tools such as OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), time in motion studies, process mapping and 2D + 3D CAD drawing. Also, a variety of data analysis techniques including, RAG, GAP, downtime, and lost time analysis.
Moreover, personal developments have come thick and fast over the past 2 months. Some of the most prevalent are in client communications from on the factory floor interacting with operators and mechanical, process and control engineers. To multiple presentations to management, contractors and OEM suppliers detailing issues and solutions deduced from personally collected, analysed, and interpreted data sets. Furthermore, I have advanced my skills in time management of not only myself but of contractors, suppliers, and entire projects.
I also visited other LOS graduate engineers and aided them in their projects. All of which are at different stages of completion and in service to four clients at six different sites, over diverse areas of industry, all around the country. This allowed a complete view of the standard engineering project management process and the specificities each project requires to tailor our service to each client/problem.
The company ethos of Legacy of Sid promotes engineers to be independent units within a connected team where members are each adept in a wide range of engineering practices. I have found that professional consulting, supplier/industry contacts and decades of experience were openly available from the LOS team. And a great testament to the freedom and trust given to my colleagues and I, is the complete control of our personal scheduling and time management to match client/project requirements.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone at Legacy of Sid! Though the entire team has been invaluable in furthering my professional and personal progress this summer, a special thanks to: Shaun Thorp, Bob Nickless, Tom Crossley, Tom Davies, and Simon Chapman who all have contributed significant periods of their time and effort to guide and mentor me. I look forward to being back at Christmas and hopefully a long, happy career in engineering.