Hi!

Our fourth week at GKN Aerospace was a so called activity-week, which means that two days were spent on group and leadership development while the remaining days were meant for study visits. Due to the COVID situation very few companies were interested in inviting outsiders to their sites, which resulted in that our study visits were much more limited than those performed by previous graduates.

During the development days there was a couple of group exercises done to get to know each other better and to investigate which roles we take on in different situations. These exercise were later used in order to relate the theoretical knowledge to our own actions. A lot of focus were spent on the stages that newly formed groups go through (forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning), how these stages impact the group members and what types of leadership styles that are efficient in the different stages. We also learned the basics regarding how human’s reacts to feedback and how feedback should be given in a constructive way in order to circumvent the natural defense mechanisms. These exercises were very interesting and my general opinion is that people need to become better at giving feedback.

Our first study visit was at GKNs own Global Technology Center (GTC) here in Trollhättan where we got a warm welcome, a presentation of the purpose of GTC and a guided tour. We got the opportunity to see some advanced additive manufacturing methods that they are investigating and the composite manufacturing laboratory where they are trying to automatize the process of building composite turbine blades.

The second place that we visited were the Swedish air-base F7 in Såtenäs, where we watched how the technicians prepare the Swedish fighter aircraft JAS before take-off and a couple of take-offs.  This was combined with a presentation of how the flight technicians work in general, what type of maintenance they perform on the fighter jets between flights and a close up inspection of the fighters that were currently in the maintenance hangar. I was very impressed by this visit since I have never seen the JAS-fighters in action on such a close distance before.

As a whole it was a couple of exiting days with a lot of laughter and I got the feeling that I have learned new things about all group members. Now are all the trainees preparing for new adventures and starting this week will we be on our first rotations. I will start at the manufacturing engineering department but I still don’t know what type of projects I will be working on.

See you soon.