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Month: March 2019

Company Visits in England

Company Visits in England

Yet another adventure is over and this time we ended up in England, UK. As you most problably know by now are you as a Global Graduate working in 10 weeks periods at one position which then is rounded off with an activity week. So this week in England was the third activity week since our rotation at Engines Digital where we had a project in the US ended last Friday. Nevertheless, we managed to visit a range of cool companies during our tour in the UK.

  • GKN Filton
  • GKN Western Approach
  • GKN Aerospace Top Management
  • Airbus
  • Reaction Engines
  • Harewell Space Cluster med besök hos RAL Space och ESA

Our trip started off with a weekend in London where we squeezed in some sightseeing and a thrilling game of fotboll. Once the rental car was picked up, we typed in Bristol in the GPS and our eminent driver Emelie drove us safely there. The first company visit was hosted by GKN Aerostructures in Filton and David, a Swedish Global plc Graduate. He showed us around in the diffrerent factories and gave us an insight of how it is to work in the UK. We got the great oppurtunity to see the assembly of the last wing to A380 and impressing wingstructres to A350.

Tuesday made us be early birds since we had an appointment in Abingdon and Reaction Engines. We meet with their Graduates who teached us all about the company, the engine SABRE and the future of supersonic flights. They gave us a tour in the faciltites and we got to se the development lab as well as the first test site for the heatexchanger, the core technology of SABRE, super cool! Keep an eye open for Reaction Engnies and read more about there disruptive technologies: https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/.
The Tueday continued back in Bristol where we visited GKN Western Approach, a site where wing spars i composite are manufactured. It was very easy to follow the value stream since the factory was built-to-purpose which is not often the case in many other sites where a larger range of products are manufacutured under the same roof.

We spent Wednesday at Airbus where we learned more about the final assembly of wings for the mility freight aircraft A400M, simulation of fuel test and mechanical testing of wings. We also got to meet with some Graduates at Airbus, and as you might figured out by now we’re growing a network of Gradutes within all over the world which is absolutely fantastic!

Thursday offered a unique chance to meet with the Top Management of GKN Aerospace. During the day at the office in London we had intreseting and personal chats about e.g. future business models and strategies with our CEO Hans Büthker, CFO Will Hoy and Director of Global Marketing & Communications Dan Kendrick. Thank you for sharing your personal stories and tips!

We ended our week of visits with another early morning and a drive to Harewell Space Cluster, a campus which houses for 89 companies all active within space. During our visit we met with RAL Space and ESA which gave us an insight to the UK space industrie. A very intresting day which was rounded off with a history lecture at Stonehenge. The question why it was built still remains without an answer…

Thank you England and my amazing Graduate colleagues for another great week abroad! I must pinch myself sometimes to realize that I actually have the best job in the world. Now we’re all looking forward to spend the spring months on Swedish soil and our new rotations which starts the 1st of April (not an April Fool!). But first, shall we network with the space industy since Space Forum is taking place in Trollhättan and we’ll also welcome a large group of young girls which shall be introdcuded to what an engineer can do at GKN Aerospace.

Talk to you soon!

 

 

Back on swedish ground!

Back on swedish ground!

Now we have all soon landed safely on Swedish ground again since Wictor and Nina are landing later this evening! These two weeks on the other side of the big sea have gone faster than the wind, but we all feel satisfied about the job that we have done over there. Really fun that we got this opportunity to work with a project together with our site in Manchester, Connecticut. We have been meeting a lot of lovely colleagues who have been very helpful and advised on places we shouldn’t miss on our trip.

Exciting team outside the factory in Manchester.

We have of course also done a lot of touristy stuff and tried some of the American delicacies such as penaut butter cups (recommend!!!), weak coffee (do not recommend!!!), lobster rolls, deep-fried oysters and of course some burgers/pizzas.

Lobster rolls and deep-fried oysters.

We also visited a few bigger cities nearby such as Boston, New Haven and Providence where we pretended to be students at Harvard, MIT, Yale and Brown University. When the guys chose to spend a day in New York, we decided to go on a college game in basketball instead. Really exciting game where we ended up being some really dedicated fans to the home team UConn Huskies who finally won the match with only two points. The atmosphere felt exactly like the one seen on film!

Exciting basketball game.
Really happy fans that got a photo with the mascot.

Now it is just to start washing clothes and repacking, because on Friday we are leaving Sweden once again. This time to England on a lot of company visits. To be continued…

Touchdown USA

Touchdown USA

Emelie and me arrived to the U.S late this Sunday. Now you might panic and think what on earth have I missed? Well, the rotation we all been working on for the last 8 weeks is a connectivity project where we are to launch a pilot in one of our factories on the American east coast. We are now facing two weeks of implementation which is going to be really exciting. The factory here in Manchester, CT, is very small compared to the one in Trollhättan but it is really fun to see the similarities that exists despite size and geographical location. The rest of the trainee team arrived on Wednesday so now we’re all together again, as it should be. Our colleagues here in the US have welcomed as in the best way possible by bring a whole box of dark roast coffee and fika. There have been many Swedes here during the years and have transferred important knowledge; that Swedes crave strong coffee and fika for working properly.

Besides working have we explored the surroundings of Manchester, which is a really small city, compared to American standard. It has been a colorful American experience so far, one that you don’t get in the bigger metropolitans. For example, Emelie and me set out to find an ATM and found a peculiar one – a Drive-In ATM. Very convenient when it snows and the wind is cold! Yesterday we took a drive to the nearest bigger city Hartford and went to a concert with Mumford & Sons in XL Arena, simply a great evening!

The Drive-in ATM experience
A great show with Mumford and Sons

Talk to you soon!
Amanda Dalstam