Trip to Jaguar Land Rover Solihull
On 28th June 2019, 30 Computer Science students from Year 10 were selected to go to Jaguar Land Rover Solihull to look at how computer control is used in the production of motor vehicles. During the morning session we were split in two groups of fifteen. The activity was a complex building challenge which required good communication and teamwork skills with people that we were not used to working with to see how we would cope. Before starting the challenge, we were given 5 minutes of practise time. The manager stressed the importance in planning and collaborating in our teams to ensure production line success. Everyone finished the seven models in the time allocated and in the final round we had to build each part carefully and be more time efficient. We had to make ten models in ten minutes and this required extremely efficient construction skills and good communication and organisation. The activity emphasised how important communication, organisation and teamwork are in our future careers.
After the lunch break we got ready for a tour of the production factory. We all had to wear high visibility jackets and during our tour we saw the significance of automation and robotics in manufacturing the cars and how precise they needed to be. It was reassuring to know that JLR use a programming language called python which is the exact one we use in our computer science lessons. The cars were put together at a rapid pace and many quality control checks were taken to make sure everything was up to an exceptional standard. Despite Jaguar Land Rover being a British based automotive company, eight out of ten cars were left-hand drive. This reflected how much Jaguar Land Rover have grown internationally as a company in America, Asia and Europe. At the end of the day everyone was impressed with the production and quality of the amazing cars as well as the skills of the workers at Jaguar Land Rover.
Gurvir Rai, 10 Nelson.
