I've been with Cadbury Trebor Bassett, CTB, as a Manufacturing Graduate for nearly 6 weeks now. The time has flown, which must mean I'm having fun!
WEEK 1 - Arrival on site at Marlbrook (my first placement as Process Engineer for apx 9 months) meant meeting lots of new people. I was shown around the site by a number of different people so that I could understand the process (making chocolate crumb- which looks like broken up biscuits!) from different angles. There was a lot of information to take in, but it was very interesting and quite different to the milk factory that I had previously worked.
WEEKS 2-4: Over the next few weeks I spent the odd day off site on Manufacturing Graduate Visits, these included a trip to Chirk (where the beans first arrive), Somerdale (home of the Crunchie) and Sheffield, the later defiantly the highlight as we got to see 'a day in the life of a Jelly Baby'! We also visited the Regional Distribution Centre for the Midlands where I've never seen so much chocolate!
The rest of my time was spent settling into Marlbrook, gaining further knowledge on the processes and formulating my objectives, which include:
Scheduling and implementing an improvement programme for the cleaning systems they use (called CIP, which you will no doubt hear more about from me...)
Liaising with different suppliers such as boiler maintenance, water and chemical suppliers, to ensure our contracts are delivering what they should for both quality and health and safety, and
Developing a revised mass balance, to help identify and minimise production losses.
WEEK 5 - Three fantastic days were spent at an amazing conference centre, with all the new graduates and the Graduate HR team. The aim of this was for us to learn about the graduate programme and reiterate some of the potentials and behaviours (judgement, drive and influence) that CTB expect from their employees, this was made fun by lots of workshops, challenges and discussion groups, with the odd 'energiser' thrown in case any one was suffering from the late nights getting to know the other graduates.
Now it's back to site where the real work begins...
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