A cohort of learners from Horizon and CamdenBoss recently completed a level three Improvement Technician Apprenticeship facilitated by Marshall Skills Academy. Following their endpoint assessment, we are delighted that all 10 learners passed with six people achieving a distinction for their efforts.
This is what Quality Assurance Associate, Anastasia said about completing the qualification:
"During the Summer of 2020, my manager sent us an invitation to look at potential apprenticeships that the company could provide in cooperation with Marshall Skills Academy. Among those opportunities, there was the Improvement Technician Apprenticeship, which I decided to undertake. I can happily say now this was one of the best decisions I have made regarding my education and my career progression. The apprenticeship started in February 2021 and was completed in March 2022. Marshall Skills Academy provided great training sessions and guidance during this course. We had a brilliant tutor who was always there to support and encourage us to continue.
"As part of my improvement project for my final assessment, I worked on an internal complex process that required collaboration between three different departments. This was a big challenge for me but also a huge learning curve. The completion of this project using the Lean tools I learned during the apprenticeship had great benefits for my company and myself. For the business benefit of this project, I managed to increase the awareness within my stakeholders, standardise the process steps, changed steps that were necessary to reflect reality and improved the communication between departments. All this concluded to have a more robust process and strong foundations that can lead to Prerational Excellence. I had the chance to get out of my comfort zone and discover skills that I could not imagine I had. I completed my End Point Assessment, and my grade came through as being a 'Distinction', you can imagine the huge smile that covered my face. I felt contentment and gratitude.
"Overall, a great experience with many valuable lessons for my luggage to continue carrying on my career trip. A big thank you to my company (Horizon) and Marshall Skills Academy for this opportunity and the support and guidance throughout."
Senior Scientist, Bronwyn from Horizon also shared her experience of completing the qualification:
"Doing the Improvement Technician Apprenticeship, opened my eyes to a whole new field that I did not know existed. As an R&D scientist, I had experience solving problems, planning experiments, and managing research projects, but I had no idea that recognised PI tools existed. During my apprenticeship, I learned what these tools were, and how to use them. I also had the opportunity to apply recognised PI tools to a project I was working on together with my team at work. Although there are many tools that I will apply to my work in the future, my favourite tools are those for root cause analysis. With R&D style work, a key aspect is getting to the root cause of problems and fixing them. Using recognised tools for problem-solving can help to get to the root cause of the problem quicker, and ensure that no steps, especially the less obvious ones, are overlooked."
Horizon Diagnostic Reagents expert, Georgia said:
"I have been studying with Marshall Skills Academy for the last 14 months and completing my L3 Process Improvement Technician qualification. The experience has been extremely positive and insightful. What has been particularly satisfying is that even before completion of the certification, I was seeing significant benefits to my workplace in terms of staff satisfaction, process efficiency and cost-saving. The skills I have obtained are bound to continue these trends, especially now that I am confident in my knowledge enough to coach these principles to colleagues - helping to establish a strong culture of process improvement.
"My project involved streamlining a scientific production pipeline, though extensive, it was interesting and provided a huge sense of satisfaction. The obstacles experienced only enhanced my ability to manage large improvement projects. I hope to use the outcomes of running these tasks to repeat the project most efficiently on other pipelines here at Horizon. This would not be the case without the exemplary teaching and mentoring of my learning coordinator and Marshall Skills Academy and everybody involved in the delivery and assessment of this course."
Everyone at Marshall Skills Academy is proud of the learners’ achievements and progress throughout the course. Congratulations to everyone who completed the Improvement Technician Apprenticeship Qualification.