March 21, 2023
Ben Datson went from stocking shelves at a supermarket to joining Pall, where he’s worked his way from the factory floor to an engineering technician position. Below, see how his approach to embracing every opportunity led him to his current role—and toward a degree in manufacturing engineering.
Pall makes hundreds of products that have to do with filtration and purification, and we have factories around the world. Here in Newquay, UK, we make medical products, and the main one now has to do with breathing filtration. If someone’s on a ventilator, for instance, there’s a filter between the machine and the patient. It stops anything from transferring back and forth. So when the machine is switched to a new patient, only the filter has to be replaced instead of taking the whole machine apart and cleaning it.
I’m a product engineering technician now, but I’ve probably worked in about 75% of the rooms here during my time on the shop floor. At the moment, I’m actually working on projects from a room I worked in for five years, so I’ve gained a lot of knowledge. I’ve got a nice blend at the moment between teaching others and learning new skills myself.
Our job is to help the shop floor resolve material issues. For example, if the raw materials come in from the suppliers and they’re the wrong shape or color, or they’re not reacting the way they should react, it’s up to us to investigate. Sometimes, it’s the machine setting, in which case we change our machines here on-site. Or it could be the supplier has made changes that affect how the material runs in our machines.
Six years ago, I was working in a supermarket, stocking shelves, without a lot of career prospects. I felt like I had to do something. Another guy I was working with at the store was feeling the same way, and he went to Pall first. I think he’d been here for about three or four months when he convinced me to give it a go.
I joined Pall as an agency worker, on the shop floor, running machines. Whenever an opportunity came up to learn a new machine, I volunteered, so I could build up my experience around the shop floor pretty quickly. I thought it was a good idea to move to another room within Pall when the opportunity came up. When you know more rooms and more processes, that increases how valuable you are to the company. If there’s a shortage in one room, you can be useful.
I did that for about four years until I became established in one room. For a couple of years, I became the first point of call for my line leader when she was off, or when there was a large project going on. Throughout that time, I kept volunteering for projects, which led to the opportunity to become a line leader myself. Eventually, the role of product engineering technician came up. I went for it and got it.
When you’re on the shop floor, you may wonder why management can’t change a process. It’s not until you come upstairs and see how much paperwork, regulations, and signoffs you need to be able to change something small that you understand. Coming from the shop floor means I have an understanding of what the people on the floor are thinking. Having that crossover is invaluable, really.
We use DBS for almost every meeting, whatever department you work in, which means everyone can go to every meeting and know how it will run. Everyone knows what the graphs are showing. Everyone knows that red and green days show if you hit a target or not.
Our DBS boards are like a grid, so anyone should be able to walk up to a board, see why it’s red, and know what action is in place to make it green again. It really depends on what metric you’re looking at. If it’s output, maybe you need to run overtime to catch up. Maybe you need to get more staff in.
For example, there are milestones for every project. That could mean if you need to make 1,000 of a product a day and you made 900, that’s a red day. We then have a 24-hour action to get back to a green day. If it can’t be resolved in 24 hours, there’s a permanent action. So if something extreme like a machine blowing up requires the permanent action of bringing in a new machine, the success links to that single red day in production even though it’s part of a six-month project.
Once you learn how DBS works, it’s really useful. When we have engineers off, we can cover each other’s areas. When you’re on the shop floor, your main focus is to keep the machine running, but up here in Product Engineering, you actually see what can happen if a procedure isn’t followed, which is quite eye-opening. When you see the whole picture, then you actually understand why each part of the process needs to be controlled strictly.
If you show you’re willing to work and you’re willing to learn, Pall will keep helping you develop. If the right person gets in and shows interest in a subject—be it people management or fixing machines—the team at Pall will train you as soon as you get in the door. All you need to do is let the right people know that you’re motivated. If you want to learn how to fix the machine when it goes wrong, you can become an operator setter.
A lot of people are happy to press buttons all day. But I want to know why I’m pressing that button, what happens afterward. That’s why, originally, I wanted to join the technical support team—the people who set the machines to run. If there’s a jam, a setter investigates further. The initial plan was to develop mechanical skills, so whenever there was a jam, I would always ask to set it. I found if you ask questions, a lot of people are willing to explain what they’re doing.
As part of my new role, Pall is putting me through an HND (Higher National Diploma). It’s remote learning, which means I can work my 39 hours a week and study at home. Eventually, I’ll have a foundation degree in manufacturing engineering.
I’ve finished the engineering and mathematics part, and I found that interesting, so it didn’t really feel like work. Now I’m learning about material properties and electromagnetism.
The plan now is to complete the HND and, hopefully, go to a full degree. I’d like to specialize in something that we can use here at Pall. About 80% of our products are made from plastics, so something like plastic molding techniques or the molecular structure of plastic would be useful. I want to continue progressing.