Over the past six months, Jaguar Land Rover graduates and engineers have been inspiring and nurturing talented science and maths students in the Engineering Education Scheme (EES).
Teams of students aged 16-17 partner local companies to solve STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) problems in a business context. Graduates in the Midlands and Merseyside are set real-life challenges for students.
Here in Halewood, All Saints Catholic High School pupils were asked to improve the process for checking bonnet closure effort. We’ve had a number of warranty claims relating to bonnets closing on our vehicles and we needed to develop an efficient and accurate method of testing.
The team made up of; Jack Newhall, Scott Owen, Dylan Teevan and Regan Guy worked hard to develop a design that was easy and intuitive to use and also safe and ergonomically suited to the majority of the population. Due to this the team had to develop and change their design throughout the process.
The design they decided on was a double sucker design with a weight that needed to meet requirements to be ergonomically safe. After lots of testing the team used a seatbelt for placement and height, with a custom designed clip which allowed the device to be easily placed and could be then used for pass or fail testing.
The team then visited Halewood for some final on-site testing. They also had a tour of the plant and got to see first-hand how their design would be used.
They also got to share their design with some of our leaders, who were really impressed with all their hard work. The design is now been used across Halewood for testing and is a huge success.
The team also attended the regional ‘Celebration and Assessment’ event to mark the end of their project. All Saints Catholic High School scooped third place in the North West event, which involved 50 teams. Well done to the whole team!
Nick Teasdale, Quality Manager, told us, “The tool is simple and effective and the students have done a brilliant job working on the project and using trial and error to develop the best solution.”
Well done to project mentors David Ragg, Rachel Oldham, Callum Wilson and Dave Parkinson.
