Operating technician Review

My Job role as a operating technician was to work alongside a team on the production lines that package the drugs. Some day to day duties included carrying out changeovers between orders which involved changing machinery parts, programme recipes and components. While the line was running, some tasks would involve dealing with machine errors, keeping the line topped up of components such as tablets, cartons and leaflets.

Since starting this job I have become a lot more technically minded and am able to deal with errors and issues with the line promptly having put my coursework side of the apprenticeship to test. I have also been able to massively improve my confidence and communicating skills by talking part in many group and single presentations and publically speaking at events.

On a whole I would say I did enjoy the apprenticeship, however there were definitely some areas that could have been improved, such as; When I first joined it took around 2 months for me to be given a 'home' area in which I would be based. And this was due to no one really knowing where I was going to be put. This being something that should have been sorted months before my first day.

The structure of the apprenticeship was probably its biggest downfall, although on the whole I did enjoy it. It was very unorganised and on a lot of different occasions it was unclear what was going to happen or what should be happening. For example, over the 2 year course I had 3 different NVQ tutors, each with different ways of teaching which didn't make it easy. During college we were put into classes all about car/plane engineering which obviously had no relevance to me. I was told at one point I would be doing 4 rotations during my apprenticeship to have some exposure to different areas, however this never happened.

From my employer I cant complain about the support I received. My managers throughout the apprenticeship were all very helpful and supportive. Having 1-1s on either a two week or monthly basis to check up on how I was doing and my progress was really good for me. And they would always give me names of people that would be good to contact regarding parts of my coursework/apprenticeship.

The support from the training provider however was a different story. Irregular visits from my tutor, cancelling visits when I had already arranged to be out of my working area for that day. Not getting back with feedback from my handed in assignments. Losing work that I had handed in for him to mark. This was probably the biggest strain on my apprenticeship and getting it al finished on time.

The qualification I got at college I would say half helped me to carry out my role at work, some classes were relatable such as the lean/six sigma class and the production line one. Although the CAD, engineering maths and drawings classes really had no relevance to any aspect of my role.

There are lots of extra curricular groups out there to join at Astra Zeneca, such as football team, running club, pub quiz nights, AZ inspire. The apprenticeship network carry out lots of group activities to improve the bond and network of apprentices throughout site. We also got took on an outward bound at the start of our course which really created a close knit group of us.

Yes

Astra Zeneca as an employer I believe is a very respected and caring company to work for where everyone's opinions and thoughts are listened to and took on board. They advice you to set goals and do what you can to develop in your career and will really help guide you to reach them.

Be patient because although at the start it may feel like its going no where and everything seems a bit unorganised, once you settle in and are within a team, it will only get better and the opportunities within Astra Zeneca are amazing. Sometimes if you want things doing, you will be expected to go for it yourself and this may be seen as a bad thing but its good as it teaches you to network and communicate with people around site.