A Working Day for Christopher Witt

SEO C3P Specialist and Operations Manager

Christopher studied Mechanical engineering at North East London Polytechnic and after a number of different engineering jobs settled down at BAE Systems as a development engineer on thermal imaging systems for military applications. Progressing to Principal Engineer Christopher finally left for the new challenges offered teaching CAD/Visualisation skills to the automotive industry after extensive experience of this technology at BAE. This role finally brought Christopher into the Upstream Service arena in which he now works with a major automotive OEM in the south-east. During this time Christopher has completed his Open University studies for an MSc in Engineering as well as becoming a chartered engineer with the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.

After arriving at work my day normally starts with a cup of coffee and a review of Outlook checking both incoming mails and calendar events for the day. In addition to looking after a team of USE* engineers I also have my own direct customer activities to undertake which means I have to plan my day to satisfy all parties.

One of my roles as a C3P Specialist is to undertake the more involved serviceability studies which involve the use of various simulation software packages we have available. Foremost of these would be Kineo Path Planner can resolve a collision free path for an item in a complex package environment so common in modern automotive designs. Today I have been requested to revisit an earlier study for engine cover removal on a new commercial vehicle. The previous study had identified that there was insufficient clearance for the cover to be removed from the under-hood environment which also impacted manufacturing who would have struggled to install the item in production. Instead of just rejecting the cover design I modified the cover design to facilitate removal and fed back the revised model, along with a detailed report, to the designer as a proposal for resolving the issue. Today should simply involve revisiting the study with the updated program data just to confirm Service acceptance and ensure there are no further hidden issues that have arisen.

With the engine cover activity complete I head of to lunch in the canteen, always an interesting activity with chef never failing to surprise and delight.

This afternoon I have a meeting to review progress on a global cost avoidance tool we are developing within the USE* SERP team on site. Attendees come of the audio/Web-Ex meeting come from the North American and European Service departments. In earlier meeting we put forward the proposal for a more direct method for calculating the cost impact of new designs on warranty expenditure and have taken the feedback from the various regions on board in the development process of this new tool. Today we will demonstrate the new revision and discuss future steps with a view to delivering the global application. All goes well and with some actions assigned we are now close to wrapping up this activity and rolling out the tool on some forthcoming vehicle and power-train programs.

The last major task for the day is to undertake an objective review session with one of our new SERP engineers. This session will provide an opportunity for me to give some guidance to the employee on areas of improvement, based upon a review of their work to date. This not only ensures we deliver the best possible service to our customer but also works towards developing the skills sets of the engineer. A set of objectives were set with this dual development in mind and we review progress and agree a path forward beneficial to all parties.

With this last activity complete it is time to check my mail and tidy up any last actions in advance of tomorrow's new surprises…

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