Tell us, what do you do at DAF?
"I currently work as a Senior Production Engineer at the truck factory. Along with three other production engineers, I am responsible for all of the electronic systems. One example would be the software that needs to be uploaded to the truck and read out. We are also responsible for installations such as the brake test bench, the alignment test bench and the power test bench, as well as new software releases that are used on the PCs in production."

What does an average work day look like?
"It's difficult to predict in advance. I usually start my day sorting out my emails. Then I join the daily start-up meeting at the factory. That's nice, because you get direct contact with the people who work in production, so if there are any problem you hear about them directly from the people themselves. Every single day is different. You have to take care of a lot of things and make sure that the line doesn’t stop. You have several meetings, some of them are held to support ongoing business, others are meetings for various projects alongside other departments. This is called simultaneous engineering."

What have you learnt? 
"DAF is huge. So when I started here as a production engineer it was really a matter of finding out who you need to talk to about a specific topic. That takes time, but the people who work here are amazing and by now we all know what to expect from each other. Once you know that, you can get things done quickly."

What are the key features of your job?
"You have to work together. We do everything as a team. You also need to be able to communicate well with different people, for example with colleagues in production or product development, but you also have regular contact with external suppliers and you have to give feedback to senior management. Not to mention, you can forget about rigidly planning out your week. You never know which tasks will be a priority until the day itself, so you need to be good at quickly switching from one task to another. This role doesn't have you sitting at your laptop all day. That and the variety of the job that makes it interesting for me."