We have finally arrived in the land of freedom and started our second activity week, which is in California. The first few days were spent around Los Angeles, where we took the Monday to visit one of our sites in Santa Ana, roughly an hour by car from downtown LA. We were greeted by the site HR manager, Leslie Gelle, who took us on an educational tour of their facilities and workshops. The GKN Aerospace Santa Ana site manufactures honeycomb panel structures. In principle, these are made of two thin metal sheets with a grid in between, which resembles a honey comb. The result works a bit like a thermos, and minimizes transfer of heat and noise to the surroundings.

The parts that are made using honey comb plates are predominantly located in the rear part of the engine. Besides the tour, we met site manager Scott Gulyas for an interesting discussion about the future development of the site. We also took the chance to catch up with one of our fellow Global Graduate colleagues, Honi Ahmadian-Tehrani.