VPCR Technician Review

Since completing my L3 apprenticeship in July 2022 I have been working within the Product Improvement Department as a VPCR Technician, releasing and modifying parts on current product engines. VPCRs can be requested by a wide variety of people (including being raised on behalf of both customers and suppliers) and I regularly work with a lot of departments to ensure that any changes implemented meet project requirements and work as expected. I am now at Teesside University completing my Mechanical Engineering Degree through 1 day a week of day release on a degree apprenticeship programme.

The first module of the degree course was Applied Mathematical Methods, through which I learnt more theory behind various concepts I occasionally interact with at work, which has allowed me to have a better understanding of a lot of the graphs and data we use. I am now coming to the end of the Manufacturing Processes module, coming from an apprenticeship and therefore knowing one company it has been particularly interesting to learn about various lean manufacturing techniques and how they can be applied differently in different manufacturing environments.

I spend one day a week at University from September to May, and then through the Summer semester have a more work based module that is studied remotely. Before we were started we were given a very clear plan of what modules we would be doing when, and when we would need to work on our EPA portfolio etc alongside this.

I have weekly 1:1s with my manager and one of the topics is what my progress is at Uni and if there is any additional support that I need, I have never had a problem with getting the time out of work to do Uni work and have access to any software I need on my work laptop

The module leaders can be hit and miss whether they are supportive of people on an apprenticeship course or very academic and struggle to explain concepts in a way that is easy to understand. I have had varied response rates when trying to email people at the uni. We have tripartite reviews roughly once every 10 weeks, there will be more to say in these later in the course but so far they have not been massively useful.

As said above I feel that what we have covered so far has given me a better understanding of some of the concepts / data I work with and an understanding of how processes I am familiar with may differ across other companies. My next module will be on CAD which is something I interact with occasionally so will be useful to get more familiar with.

My team has a regular cuisine club where we go out for meals, and there are also a certain number of team building activities through the year. Unfortunately the sports and social club shut down in covid but there is an onsite gym which is free and an unofficial football game.

Yes

Cummins is a very interesting and supportive company with a friendly and helpful company culture. There are a lot of people who are now in senior roles who started as apprentices in Darlington and it is generally fairly easy to get approval for support a course / qualification that is relevant to your role / progression

Go for it