Engineering Placement 2022

Choosing where to start and grow your career has a major impact on your professional and personal life, so it’s equally important you know that the company that you choose to work at, and its leaders, will support and guide you. With a diversity of people, global locations, technologies and products, 3M is a place where you can collaborate with 96,000 other curious, creative 3Mers.

“3M is making incredible impact in communities around the globe. As the leader of 3M’s global community engagement, I am incredibly proud to say that you will be working alongside 3Mers, community partners and customers who are extremely committed to making positive and equitable change.” – Michael Stroik, vice president of community relations

The Impact You’ll Make in this Role

Successful candidates will have a fantastic opportunity to be assigned to an area of a manufacturing site, to work alongside and learn from experienced engineers, whilst attending training including Six Sigma and Lean training with our graduate engineers and taking part in our Emerging Talent Training programme.

As an Engineering Industrial Placement Student you will be part of and learn from the Manufacturing Technology Engineering group, the primary purpose of whom is to ensure the manufacturing plant and business deliver against their annual strategic target in the fields of cost, cash, growth, service, quality and safety.  Our widely spread and innovative product technology base provides interesting and varied manufacturing challenges that stimulate our world-renowned culture of innovation and creativity.

3M has achieved regional & global recognition for its achievements in manufacturing efficiency, service & environmental awareness as well as its ability to develop & scale-up new products utilising new technologies.  As an Engineering Industrial Placement Student you will be working as part of a highly focused and driven team of engineers.

The projects in new ‘growth’ areas will be on new product introduction, line optimisation and product qualification, whereas in the more established areas, the manufacturing engineering team will be focused more on waste reduction, process/productivity improvement and data analysis. You’ll become knowledgeable about our developing technologies, the quality systems that surround our manufacturing processes and learn to work with people at all levels of the organisation - from the machine operators to the senior managers. Example projects that you would typically be involved in:

• Downtime Reduction – Changing between different product types is a lengthy process, the project is to quantify DT and target the biggest opportunities to improve.
• Raw Material Qualification –. To ensure that the product is compliant with production, performance and quality metrics, organise testing, make order runs and quality inspection before the change is approved.
• New Product Qualification - Manufacturing engineers will work with production and the development lab, to manufacture a product suitable for the customer’s specification.
• Quality Improvement – Projects involve working alongside the quality engineering team to understand historical trends and production data to further develop specifications.
• Process optimisation – The project focus is identifying optimum settings and set-up visual management to monitor cycle times. 
• Lean Projects - Reduce pallet space in production areas by lean supply of raw materials to production equipment.

Your Skills and Expertise 

To set you up for success in this role from day one, 3M is looking for candidates who must have the following qualifications:

• Studying for an Engineering or Science based degree
• Strong Communication skills
• Competent PC user
• Good problem solver

Additional qualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role include:

• Pro-active self-starter
• Highly motivated with the drive & energy to lead and influence change
• Good team player able to work well with & influence others
• Ability to prioritise effectively

Benefits 

• Travel: 5 to 10% expected in first year for training
• Role Location: Atherstone, Warwickshire
• Salary – No less than £20,545

Other Benefits Include:

• 25 days paid annual holiday
• Contributory SMART Stakeholder Pension Scheme with up to 10% employer contribution
• Life Assurance Scheme 4 x salary
• General Employee Stock Purchase Plan providing the opportunity to purchase 3M stock at discounted rates
• Discount on 3M products
• Employee discount scheme providing preferential rates across major UK retailers and service providers
• Employee Assistance Programme
• FlexAbility  - empowers employees to adjust when and where they work – in ways that reflect individual roles, personal circumstances, and help to drive business outcomes and work-life balance

Training and Development

The successful candidate will initially undergo a period of intense training in their role. Taking responsibility for their own sub project areas, the successful candidate will have plenty of scope to develop new technical and interpersonal skills. We operate in a highly collaborative environment so Industrial Placements can rely on plenty of support from colleagues to help them get started and this will continue throughout their time at 3M.

Supporting Your Well-being

3M offers many programs to help you live your best life – both physically and financially. To ensure competitive pay and benefits, 3M regularly benchmarks with other companies that are comparable in size and scope.