The story of Jan

Senior Engineer, R&D

I’m Jan and I’m a Senior Body Shell Engineer in the TME Body Design Division. I love my job, and am proud to be able to tell my friends that I design cars for Toyota, one of the world’s most famous automotive brands, right here in Belgium.

How and why did you join Toyota?

Right from childhood I’ve always been crazy about cars and motorbikes. This led to my studying Automotive Engineering at the University of Antwerp. I knew Toyota had production facilities in Europe but didn’t realize – until I went to the TME stand at a Job Fair – that Toyota had a development centre here in Belgium actually doing design work. When I found out, I immediately applied!

Can you briefly describe your journey through Toyota until now? 

I was delighted to be asked to join TME on their graduate programme. This gave me an excellent overall view of the company, through formal and on the job training. I even spent six weeks working on the production line, which was a great experience. After the graduate programme I began as an Engineer for exterior plastic parts, then a Body Shell Engineer, before being made Senior Body Shell Engineer in January 2020.

What's it like to work at TME?

It’s an amazingly multicultural working environment here. I work alongside colleagues from 40 or so different nationalities. This has broadened my perspective; I learn a lot from the people around me. We’re all helped by the Toyota way of working. Basically this means that we all have the same working practices, so it’s easy to move teams and quickly fit in. This is now changing to the 5C’s, but it’s still centred around respect for people and quality. I like the fact that Toyota is very value based, which is important to me. And that I have opportunities to share my ideas.

What do you enjoy most about your job? 

Everyone here is enthusiastic and highly motivated – and very capable and passionate about what they are doing here you are constantly learning different approaches and different ways to see things. What I like about Toyota is that if you have a good idea and you can see opportunities to improve, you can steer your career – that’s why that Sensory activity that I started with my team went to Japan – it was an improvement on what was there in terms of user experience. 