News from our apprentice – blog 6

February saw me join the Sales and Marketing Department to learn about the role of our Customer Service team, our Estimators and our marketing activities.

On my first day in this Department I went out to visit two of our customers with Commercial Manager Steve Barwick. The first customer we visited required some help with Laird EMI shielding fingerstock products that we provided them with. The customer was cutting the fingerstock and damaging it, resulting in the adhesive part not reaching its substrate correctly. It was decided that, to avoid this issue, we would supply the fingerstock cut to size for the customer.

The second customer we visited was a new one that had recently begun to use our AccuPlace automated equipment, supplied to them by their customer. We visited to introduce ourselves and ensure their equipment is running smoothly.

The next day I spent the whole day with Steve again, learning about adhesives, how they work and why we choose them. I learnt about the things that can affect a tape’s performance, such as the environment they’re stored and used in. I also learnt about the different substrates you can bond to and the reasons some are trickier than others, such as whether they have a low or high surface energy. 

Steve talked me through the company’s history too, which I found really interesting. I learnt a lot on this day!

Later on in the week I spent some time with Russ, one of our Estimators (pictured with me above explaining some technical details of a drawing) who explained how to produce quotes, including looking for raw material pricing and working out the timings, such as how long it takes to slit a log roll.

I’ve also been busy with my NVQ work and have nearly finished unit one ‘mechanical drawings for using CAD software’. This leaves me with two other units to work on until September, which are ‘maintenance’ and ‘programmable logic controller’.  I met with my NVQ assessor who showed us how our drawings would be assessed. He was very happy with one of my drawings, which I was really pleased about.

College is also going well and I enjoyed the half term week off as I got to visit family in Spain. It was great to get lots of family time and to learn how to use Spanish public transport, which was fun!

On my return I began a project to learn more about our products, I’ll explain a little more about this in my next blog. I’m enjoying being in this Department, everyone has been very friendly.  I’ll be staying here a little longer and afterwards will be moving into Production Planning.