Dan, can you share some of your experiences and learnings working as an apprentice with Chemring?
“One of the success stories is my experience of getting one of the washer insertion stations working during my apprenticeship. We'd been having multiple complications throughout the week. This was mainly because the job was being done on both the day and night shift, so communicating information across shifts made the job more difficult.
"The station that needed correcting was very overcomplicated for the job it was doing. This meant that there were lots of minor adjustments that needed to be made to line up all the components, which took a lot of hours. Once we had lined everything up, we found other issues too, such as the washers getting stuck underneath the cross slide. All the issues that were identified were directly or indirectly caused by the overcomplication of the whole station.
"What I mean by this, is that the washer had to be moved multiple times before getting placed onto the squib, therefore increasing the chances of a fault occurring. To stop all of this from happening, the old system was put back in place. This system puts the washer directly into the carriage that places it on the squib, thereby making the rest of the station redundant. It was a relief when the station started working properly, as the job had been going on for a week and across multiple shifts. The station was also needed back in production to run some trials."
What has been the most memorable part of your apprenticeship?
"For me, it was definitely the Early Careers Conference that was held last year (2019). It was great to attend the event, as I had not really learnt much about Chemring as a whole and didn't really know what the other Chemring businesses did.
"At the conference, I got the chance to meet people from other Chemring business units and discuss their job roles within the company and the successes they have had. It was also good to learn the history of Chemring and some of the plans for the business. The people I met were all in a similar boat as me, in that they were all in the early years of their careers and still learning and gaining knowledge. It was good to spend the day with them, getting to know them, and sharing experiences."