Aerobloggen

Hi all blog readers,

Now the first year has passed for us here at GKN Aerospace and oh boy does time fly when you’re having fun! During this time we have completed our first three rotations, visited two GKN sites, performed three development weeks with all Global Graduates, represented GKN at trade fairs and arranged lots of study visits at the Trollhättan site. Last but not least, we have met and been inspired by our wonderful colleagues here in the company!

Therefore, we want to thank you all for a wonderful first year and for the years to come.

As September 1st we are not the only active graduates at the Trollhättan site, so we would like to warmly welcome the next round of trainees: Jens, Emma, Robin, My and Marcus! They have taken over the blog and, as you’ve probably noticed, already posted an introduction of themselves.

Now it’s time for us to start the next chapter in our journey. This year there will be no abroad assignment due to the current situation. Instead, we will stay at the site and continue with our fourth rotation, followed by an exciting joint project.

Thank you and good bye wishes the graduates 2019!

The time has come for the new group of young graduates to carry on with the blog. We are, just like previous year, five graduates from different cities and universities around Sweden that has joined GKN Aerospace in Trollhättan. In the picture above we visited a playground in the town center that is inspired by the industrial history of the town. There is, for instance, a nozzle for the Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher that is rebuilt into a slide. The nozzle is one of the many products being developed and manufactured at GKN in Trollhättan. You can read more about it here.

The first week contained lots of new information regarding the graduate program and the company. We were assigned the departments for the first rotation which is also the department each person will return to at the end of the graduate program. Each graduate will describe their department more in detail in their own posts the coming weeks. Except for the administrative activities we also enjoyed an afternoon of disc golf together with the previous young graduates.

The second week was mostly spent in the workshops and we started out by getting an insight into the Industrial Engineering Program which is a unique high-school program where students combine theoretical subject with practical work in a manufacturing workshop. In order to understand the manufacturing processes at GKN, we got try manual lathing and milling which, for some of us, was a new experience. At the end of the week we were sent out to different parts of the site to gain understanding of how each product is processed throughout the production line.

We’re all very excited and happy to finally start this graduate program and the expectations are high for future rotations, tasks and the experiences we’ll gather the coming years.

If you’re curious to know more about us you can navigate here!

Hi everyone!

Hope you all have had a lovely summer. We are now back to work and preparing for our next rotation. This autumn/winter we will be doing one more rotation but then we will switch to doing a collaborative project together instead. Super exciting! It is not yet decided what it will be, but we will let you know as soon as we can.

Cheers,
Elin

Hello!

The UN has presented 17 global goals directed to all of the countries in the world that will help us to achieve four fantastic things year 2030:

• To abolish extreme poverty
• To reduce inequalities and injustices in the world
• To promote peace and justice
• To solve the climat crisis

We, the graduates, have created a video that will tell you more about how we at GKN Aerospace work with global goal #9 – Industry, innovation and infrastructure. This video was brought to you by a collaboration with Innovatum here in Trollhättan as studying material for students in the region.

Be sure to read more about the global goals here: https://www.globalgoals.org/

Hi there!

It’s been a while since we trainees wrote anything here. What has affected this is not so surprisingly the current situation and that GKN, as well as many other companies in Sweden, are on furlough for a couple of months. But how is it really to work during furlough?

Of course it depends from person to person but for me it has caused some readjustments. Going from full work weeks to 60% (three days a week) was a strange feeling at first, because what are you supposed to do during the days off, especially when you are supposed to avoid public places as much as possible? You can notice that the slightly older ones have an easier time finding activities to do, fixing their house, spending more time with their families etc.

This will not turn into a LinkedIn post with a carpe diem theme with seems to be popular nowadays, but something I have found very fulfilling has been online courses, a couple of hours a day. Attending those gives me a feeling that I do something productive during my longer “weekends”. But that´s what works for me, there are an abundance of activities you can pursue, it´s all about finding something that gives you more value.

Lastly, ending with some good news! We´ve got the news that if the Covid situation have calmed down a bit we will be going to Bristol this September, to have a development week (like the one we had in the US) and meet all the other global grads!

During the last two weeks a group at GKN in Trollhättan has been printing safety visors for hospitals, clinics and nursing homes in the nearby region. The printers, which are usually used to manufacture prototypes and tools, have been running non-stop to meet the demand. At the end of this week we will have delivered some 500 visors. We expect the demand to remain high, so we will probably keep making them as fast as we can for a while.

The help has been much appreciated by the healthcare workers and we are happy to be able to contribute. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something!