I graduated from the one of the best Universities in the UK with a Masters Degree in Engineering in 2010.
Here, I had worked on an extremely successful dissertation with a major player of the power generation sector (I had optimised the manufacture of a key component to produce a 30% annual saving), served as an elected member of the student body, had a fairly social and active life, and had secured a well-paid job within two weeks of graduating. Needless to say my confidence was sky-high and I was ready to tackle whatever life had to throw at me.
The job I had taken brought me to a design and manufacturing firm specialising in niche components (for obvious reasons the name of the business shall remain anonymous and shall be referred to as Company X). Two other fellow graduates landed up here, both of whom had come from top-class Universities and had worked with high profile clients during their final-year projects – like me they were raring to go and had high expectations.
My first day I spent getting to know the IT system (the word ‘system’ is used loosely here as it implies that there is a basic ‘input-process-output’ functionality). The business process system used to manage and track inventory was DOS based and resembled something you would probably see on a WWII code-breaking machine. The role of the computer mouse was completely redundant, and as I fumbled around the system, I began to notice that the general ‘housekeeping’ was poor (i.e. there were orders on the system that were decades old which were not closed off).
If the IT system was old and archaic – the personnel were cavemen, people who had grown up with the business and were in their 30th year of service (typically). When three, bright eyed, bushey tailed graduates turned up, there was a great deal of suspicion – were we there to replace them? What do we known about engineering? Being in charge of ‘instigating the concept of lean manufacturing’ I was tasked with liaising with many of the dinosaurs on the shop-floor.
If I learned anything from that place it was that the days of working with ambitious, driven people was gone. As was the world-class facilities that we were used to. Engineering seemed to be about adapting and becoming efficient with the tools that were given. Which seems to make a lot of sense thinking about it in hindsight.
Nowadays, almost three years after I first dipped into the icy cold waters of the ‘real’ engineering environment, I now work for a global analyst firm (the heaviest piece of machinery is probably a kettle) – common complaints include; not enough biscuits, hot water from the ‘hot water tank’ is too hot.
Consultification 