Meet Can Koydemir
Can Koydemir is a Quality Control Manager in Manufacturing and Assembly at Ricardo’s Midlands Technical Centre. His fascination for how things work led to him wanting to follow a career in engineering.
Q: Tell us more about you, your background and career to date?
"I never really considered doing anything other than engineering. I studied Metallurgy and Material Science at University and landed my first job in industry in 2011 at one of the largest iron foundries in Europe as a process engineer, before moving to the quality department.
"I then spent three years at a fast-paced automotive Tier-1, as a project quality engineer. The nature of the work required a lot of travelling overseas, which was fund, for a little while."
Q: Can you explain a bit more about your job at Ricardo and your key responsibilities?
"As a Quality Control Manager, I, alongside a team of four highly skilled engineers support the manufacturing and assembly team in all quality-related topics on a day-to-day basis. This includes making sure that any issues arising are dealt with in a timely manner and corrected efficiently, to prevent any repeat concerns and helping quality aspects on new projects. I am customer facing, and manage a critical account, and likewise our senior quality engineers are supporting project managers in customer queries as and when needed. I also support the head of compliance with the work that we must do to operate within the framework of international quality certifications."
Q: What’s the most enjoyable part of your job and working at Ricardo?
“I enjoy the on-going challenges that we face each day, balancing the long-term improvements we are always working to achieve, with the short-term opportunities that need our attention. Some of the complex components we manufacture go through over forty different operations and being a support function in making sure the parts reach the finish line is an exciting challenge.”
Q: What challenges are Ricardo helping its customers and the industry find solution for?
“Customer expectations are very high’ complex geometry parts for high-performance applications are required to be right first-time and within very tight project deadlines. This aspect, compared to a conventional automotive environment where project stages can take up to three to four years, is the challenging part of the business that Ricardo excels at.
"Supporting such a high-paced and high-stakes operation requires some quick decision making. I need to make sure that the decision is always data-driven, and that the data I’m using is repeatable and replicable. The decision may not always be what people want to hear, which makes it even more critical that it’s based on valid data."
Q: What are your aspirations for the future and your career?
“There’s a long list of things I’d like to implement and improve up, which my current role in the organisation allows me to do. There’s still a long way to go though. I guess, you could say, that I’m a good example of career progression because within six months of me starting at Ricardo, I had applied for and accepted my current role.”
