Engineering for Manufacturing

 

Where did you first hear about a graduate career with AkzoNobel?
I read a job advertisement on the internet. It sounded really interesting, so I applied.

What have your training experiences entailed?

The great thing about the Graduate Development Programme is that I get the opportunity to work in several different roles throughout the whole of Supply Chain. I think that by working in different departments and with so many different people has really taught me more than any training course can ever teach.   In addition, as a graduate I also get to go on the Graduate Development Programme courses, which aim to teach and develop certain competencies. These courses are really good and great fun.

What have your experiences been to date?
I started as a Project Engineer at the Rheinberg plant in Germany. I was working in that role for six months and worked on a couple of projects, including an optimisation project on the water borne small batch plant and an energy efficiency project.

After that I was working in the Rheinberg Planning & Supply department for a few months, on a project about the optimisation of raw material stock.

In my third role I got the chance to get some overseas experience in the UK, working as manufacturing operations engineer on the Slough plant for 6 month. In that role I worked on a project to increase the plant capacity by reducing the mixer cycle time.

Now I am in my current role as Continental Europe Planning Coordinator. In this role I have the opportunity to work with all the European plants. I'm currently working on several projects. I lead a project to reduce UK stock sourced from the plants in Continental Europe, I'm coordinating the supply side of a new product launch in Continental Europe, I’m working on a project to implement service level agreements between the resins plant in Slough and several European paint plants and I'm responsible for the weekly and monthly OTIF (on time, in full) reporting.

What do you like about your role at AkzoNobel?
What I like about my role, is that it gives me the opportunity to experience so much at such an early stage in my career. I’ve been with the company for less than two years and I worked in 4 different departments in two different countries with people from many different areas of the company and from many different cultures.

What are your interests away from work?
During my time away from work I often go horse riding. I also like reading, listening to music, relaxing and spending time outdoors.

What are the next steps in your career?
My current role is my last graduate placement and after that I will move to my first role outside of the graduate programme.  As nothing is fixed yet, I can’t tell what it will be, but I’m working with my mentor on where I’d like to gain experience and what I’d like to develop.