For just over two years, I worked in Multimatic's Mechanisms Engineering department, designing and developing automotive mechanisms for OEM customers, including tailgate systems, powered door mechanisms, and door hinges with integrated door checkers. These components have to balance durability, function, the feel of every opening and closing, and the realities of high-volume manufacturing.

Multimatic is a global engineering and manufacturing company whose work spans mechanisms, suspension systems, lightweight structures, composites, and complete low-volume vehicles for OEMs and motorsport.

• Design and Development: Created 3D CAD models and GD&T drawings in CATIA V5 and Siemens NX, taking mechanisms from early concepts through to production release against OEM requirements.

• Validation: Developed DFMEAs, DVP&Rs, and test specifications, defined and reviewed virtual and physical validation, and performed root-cause analysis on issues from field testing and lab durability rigs simulating thousands of cycles under hot, cold, wet, and dust conditions.

• Prototyping: Assembled prototype builds of new design concepts to support testing and validation, including a powered door mechanism prototype.

• Tolerance and Stack-Up Analysis: Managed tolerance stack-ups so functional interfaces were achievable under real production and assembly conditions.

• Design for Manufacture and Assembly: Applied DFM and DFA principles across casting, forging, stamping, CNC machining, welding, and surface finishing, working with Multimatic's manufacturing divisions on assembly-line feasibility and cost.

• Process Improvement: Set up the team's first Excel to CATIA V5 parametric templates for standard components and wrote a guide so the rest of the mechanisms team could use them, an approach I later developed much further in my MSc dissertation.

• Customer and Cross-Functional Work: Worked directly with OEM customers on technical requirements and program updates, and with testing, manufacturing, and quality teams to resolve integration issues, including assembly checks for door checker installation on the production line.

Working on mass-produced components showed me the full product lifecycle, from first concept through validation, manufacturing, and customer use, and how small details in a mechanism can decide its durability and how it feels to the customer. It also taught me to look for better ways of working rather than accepting the existing process, which is where my interest in parametric design pipelines began.