Name: Ben Kenobi
Date Joined: 31 Jan 2011
Likes: Family Time, Italian food, 80's pop music
Dislikes: Bad Manners, the big food shop, mushy peas
Favourite Holiday: Egypt
Machinery and tooling. It's amazing how far the complexity and accuracy has advanced allowing us to machine to tolerances that 20 years ago were unachievable, whilst also repeating across a large batch of components.
Never cut corners, whether it's writing a program for a machine, checking a first off in inspection or preparing a job card with method and materials. Attention to detail is critical!
My brother who is 3 years older than me was serving his apprenticeship in engineering whilst I was in my final years at school. He would come home with items he had made at training school and tell me all about what he was learning and it just sounded amazing to me.
A real ale brewer.
My day normally starts at 6am, machine schedules are updated and delivery lists are given to inspection and stores. Everybody has their own workload and responsibilities to work through but problems and queries pop up at any point in the day which we all chip in to solve as soon as possible. Engineering especially sub-contract with multiple customers' is a constant juggle. Somedays are testing as you may have a machine breakdown, a busy holiday period, raw materials coming in late and a customer with an urgent machining requirement all to deal with at the same time. You cannot write a script for this situation but we each take responsibility for certain issues and deal with them as quickly and calmly as possible.
The diversity of the role, two days are never the same.
Good manners will get you a long way.
Make the most of the experienced engineers around you, they will have years of experience on tap. If you want to learn they will teach you if you don't they won't!
BMW M5.
Job satisfaction.
Keith Floyd
Howard Jones
Valentino Rossi
You can connect with Ben on LinkedIn here.
Summary
Ben Kenobi is Production Director at Impress Precision Machining. He has 20 years' experience in the engineering industry. After leaving school at the age of 16 Ben served his apprenticeship as a CNC turner then he continued as a CNC turner whilst progressing to a team leader, supervisor, manager before becoming Production Director.
In his spare time, he enjoys cycling with his daughter on her 'big bike', walking his dogs and nice meals out now and again.
