Mike Rapin, Premier Foods
Your company: Premier Foods, Droylsden, Manchester
Your job title: Interim Engineering Manager, Sharwoods Sauces
Your main responsibilities: the maintenance and efficiency of two bottling lines, a catering line and a sauce manufacturing plant, utilising a team of eleven shift engineers and contractors.
Your start date: 23 August 2007
I like the interim life because: of the variety, each job has been in a different field - bakery, salad, ice cream, bottling. The work tends to be specific task/goal orientated and nearly always challenging.
The greatest challenge in this role is: The site is facing closure; therefore the primary objective is to maintain standards and output. The best way to achieve this is through a positive hearts and minds campaign.
The person/brand/company I most admire is: Nepalese people
Because: I admire people and cultures who are prepared to work hard, get on with the task at hand and not spend time complaining about their lot in life. I once had three Nepalese guys working for me in Saudi Arabia. One of them died of leukaemia. His body was sent back to Nepal and his two brothers then carried his body for four days from Kathmandu to their village in the mountains. To them it was a perfectively normal and reasonable thing to do. They are nice people and I will always be inspired by them.
My best ever job was: working with ice cream at Fredericks Dairies. Good people with great products and quite a few chunky problems to solve, very enjoyable.
And my worst ever was: I wouldn't want to name the company, but the job was difficult because they believed all their problems were to do with engineering. When we got a new operations manager who recognised that the problems were shared, that was when we started to turn things around and make improvements.
When I'm not at work, I like to: fly aeroplanes. I learnt to fly nearly eight years ago in the US. Since getting my licence I have flown up and down the UK, across to France and down to southern Spain. Flying gives you a great sense of freedom, it also helps keep you smart and methodical; I believe it has helped me in my work as well as being a good hobby.
I think my best achievement is my children. I believe they are two of the nicest people you are likely to meet.
In ten years time I'd like to be: the owner of my own food factory. I have always been ambitious and my work allows me to plan and work towards my own goals in life. I have a lot of bakery experience and by utilising that we have started a number of ideas in development. Next year will see them in production and at some point I hope to have the volume to justify my own factory.
back to top
