Everyone told me that means ”let’s eat milk and cookies at Hemsedal” every time they played that song this weekend…
Sitting in Newington a few months ago I was told about the legendary, annual, GKN trip to Hemsedal by a fellow Swedish coworker. I immediately contacted the trainees here to sign me up and began waiting patiently for this weekend to arrive. Norwegian skiing is something many Americans only get to dream about, but today I am fortunate enough to be one of the lucky few to have actually gone!
The trip started off with a 6 hour bus ride. Between the swedish sing alongs, and the emerging mountains as we pushed northwest into Norway, this (seemingly quick) bus ride was the perfect way to introduce a weekend ski trip in the Norwegian alps.
Skiing in Norway is very different than skiing in Connecticut. For starters, you’re on a mountain. Now, we call the places we go skiing in CT “mountains” but after this weekend, I think the term “hill” fits a little better.
Second, the lifts. I’ve never even seen an “anchor” or a “button” lift before and it definitely showed the first time I tried to use them. Good thing not too many people saw. I did eventually get the hang of it though.
Third, the saft and cookies. At around 11 AM every day a small hut on the mountain gives out warm saft and cookies to tired skiers. This FIKA-like tradition gave us the opportunity to warm up with a hot beverage as well as stop and appreciate the view from the top of the mountain. This was a small but unique touch that separates this ski experience from any other that I’ve had.
Last but certainly not least, there’s the after ski. A wonderful Scandinavian tradition where after a long day on the slopes everyone kicks back, relaxes, shares a quiet glass of wine (maybe two if you’re feeling rowdy), and definitely don’t dance on tables with a bunch of strangers, a pitcher in each hand, singing “Rock and Roll all Night” at the top of your lungs. You definitely don’t do that.
We finished the weekend with a 6hr nap on the bus ride back home followed by a week of sore legs. Totally worth it though.
We had barely landed in Sweden before the next interesting event started. People from the business sector, researchers, politicians och students gathered in Trollhättan to talk about a common interest – SPACE!
The days were packed with interesting lectures and panel discussions about today’s and future space activities. And inbetween the sessions, there was plenty of time to mingle and network among all space-intereseted people during common lunches, dinners and exhibitions.
SpaceX held an inspiring lecture about their spacecrafts and upcoming space travels. Trends in the space segment were discussed between GKN Aerospace, OHB, SpaceX, SSC, RUAG, and Christer Fuglesang from KTH. And networking is important, to the right we have our Filip standing next to Sweden’s one and only astronaut Christer Fuglesang!
My interest in space has increased since I started my employment here at GKN Aerospace, and after these days at Space Forum (Rymdforum 2019), I have gained a greater understanding of what the space industry contributes with to our everyday life. Not only is it impressive that we build spacecrafts together that can enable us to exit the atmosphere, we can also use these developed space technologies to make the world better. Satellites allows us to communicate with each other and navigate more easily, but they also create an opportunity for us to send more effective response forces to environmental disasters and the ability to monitor and analyze the climate change. Much of the research done in space has been applied here on earth, and that makes me optimistic about the future. The space industry is extremly impressive, I am hooked and looking forward to upcoming launches!
The week then went on with something that we have been really excited about: The assesment days for next year’s Graduates! It was fun to meet this year’s candidates and to be spectators instead of participants. The time flies by so fast, it was only a year ago since we were in their seat. 5 of you will be our new colleagues in September, we wish everyone who particpated good luck!
The week ended wit IGEday (Introduce a Girl to Engineering), where 28 happy, young girls spent the whole day together with us at GKN Aerospace. A great ending to this inspiring and eventful week.
During IGEday, the girls were challenged by Innovatum with a SpaceEscape, they got to meet F7 who came from Såtenäs to see them, and got a tour in our factory.
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…
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 experienceA great show with Mumford and Sons
This wednesday, our collegues Jesper, Celine, Pelle, and Samuel visited LARV 2019. They got in contact with a lot of interesting students at LTU, and were happy to see that there was a great interest in our company and our products! If you missed us, you are more then welcome to write to us Young Graduates and ask us about our business and possibilities within our company: aerotrainees@gknaerospace.com
LARV 2019
Are you also interested in the aviation and space industry? Are you up for exciting and challenging projects? Do you want to be a part of a team that makes things fly? Do you want to learn more about us?
Come to our exhibit:
CHARM in Gothenburg, 5th-6th of february
LARM in Linköping, 12th of february
HotSpot in Karlstad, 13th of february
See you there!
NOTE: Don’t forget to apply to the GKN Aerospace Global Graduate Programme 2019. Click here to send in your application!
Hey blog readers! It’s Zenas Del Rosario again—your friendly, neighborhood, American trainee. As you all know, on top of the challenges that everyone faces during the work-week, we trainees must undergo those same trials far from home for our international assignments. You may wonder what happens during the holidays while we’re abroad. Many of us test our products as we fly home to be with family; others wander into the great unknown and explore their host-countries. I’m happy to tell you that I chose the latter! So strap-in, sit tight, and allow me to regale you with my tale of adventure, intrigue, and what you could do off-the-clock as a trainee at GKN Aerospace!
And so began my adventure! Highly recommended by my Swedish friends and colleagues, I was headed into the Great Frozen North, the Arctic Circle of Grandeur, the Land of Snowy Wonders—the great city of Kiruna! I set out from Trollhättan on the Polar Express armed with nothing but my backpack of supplies and a phone filled with podcasts before enduring a 22 HOUR TRAIN RIDE. Yes, I was told to fly. No, I didn’t listen. Seat soreness aside, I was awe-struck by the snowy country sides, sleepy towns, and frozen forests that cover Sweden’s northern expanse. Like something out of a story book, I was once again amazed by Sweden’s beauty—second only to America’s! As the sun set at 2pm on Christmas Eve, the train pulled into Kiruna station; and so I gathered my things, stretched my legs, and bundled up before stepping out into the cold.
Well rested and raring to go, I awoke on Christmas morning with a sense of childish whimsy. Having never spent a winter further north than sunny San Diego, I threw open the curtains of my hotel room and basked in the sight of the white Christmas I had always dreamed of! With snow as far as the eye could see, I dressed quickly and set out to accomplish the first thing on my touristy to-do list. I hopped into a taxi thankful that the heater was on full-blast and watched the sites fly by as I rode to Santa’s unofficial, favorite vacation home—the world famous, original ICEHOTEL. I could tell you all about the amazing vaulted ceilings, one-of-a-kind sculptures, and intricate designs all carved out of ice, but a picture’s worth a thousand words so here you go…
Pics or it didn’t happen. No, the toilets were normal.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Santa on vacation. I hear he was still at work somewhere over Hawaii when I visited the ICEHOTEL. I wasn’t too sad about it though. With my epic day near completion, I headed back to Kiruna for dinner and indulged in one of Sweden’s lesser known delicacies…
Rudolph’s cousin was delicious (left). Jesus’s winter home (right).
Being the good Catholic dude that I am, I couldn’t end my Christmas break without checking in on the birthday boy—my homie and Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Before leaving on my journey back to Trollhättan, I made sure to stop by his gothic-style winter home to thank him for all the good that he allows me to do. He gave me a quick pep talk, made me promise to keep on keeping on, and sent me on my merry way.
As the saying goes, all work and no play makes Zenas a dull boy. The trainees and I work extremely hard to make things fly; but as you can see, even we find time to maintain a healthy work-life balance. If you’re reading this and want your chance to earn a spot on this amazing roster of professionals, take a swing and apply today! Until next time, gotta fly.
After a very exciting week abroad, visiting a vast amount of interesting companies throughout Europe we are finally back at our beloved site in Trollhättan, Sweden. This post will involve various interesting company visits, endeavors and stories about the places we have been at and the things we have seen. The main challenge for me as a finance trainee is to make you and myself understand all the technical terms that we encountered at each of these visits, so I ask you to overlook my lack of expertise within these areas.
So here it goes… When we arrived in the Netherlands, our first visit was to ESA (ESTEC) in Noordwijk. One of the trainees from our group, Filip Jensen, did his internship at ESA within the Chemical Propulsion section so he managed to set up a very intense but exciting day for us. We indulged ourselves in the futuristic aura that the place gave us. The first feeling that we had when we entered the company grounds was WOW!
Our host for the day was Matthew Smith, a Chemical Propulsion Engineer who gave us the tour around the premises. The first area we visited was the Propulsion lab where an YGT (Young Graduate Trainee) introduced us the complex systems of Electric and Chemical Propulsion. The ESA Propulsion Laboratory is an operational facility in the spacecraft propulsion testing field. I think that many of us thought that this was very cool but we were overwhelmed with the complexity of it, this surely was Rocket Science.
As the tour continued, we approach what in the end happened to be my favorite, the Large Space Simulator (LSS). Within the test center where the LSS is, Satellites must be tested thoroughly before sent into space because satellites are expensive, and once in orbit they cannot be fixed. In this facility we were introduced to all the complex testing that ESTEC does on satellites. It was presented by Grezgorz Izorski, an Electromechanical Instrumentation Engineer. Inside the LSS satellites are exposed to vacuum as well as simulating sunlight, which is about 20 times stronger or more than it is on Earth. Would satellites be sent to Mercury, which is much closer to the sun than Earth, then we could be confident that the satellite would not malfunction.
Furthermore, we were introduced to the Materials Lab by Nathan Bamsey, a Materials & Process Engineer. Here, we were given an overview of the different materials that we use and how they are tested. Also, a vast amount of process are undertaken to ensure stability and robustness for the chosen materials.
In between the different facility visits we were able to meet another Chemical Propulsion Engineer named Chris Hunter. He set up an open forum of discussion, giving us the possibility to ask relevant questions encompassing the industry and the challenges that we have in the future. This visit also gave Filip the possibility to meet many of his former colleagues.
The trainee group in front of a satellite at ESTEC in Noordwijk, Netherlands.
Fokker Landing Gear
The day after the tour at ESTEC, we travelled further south toward Helmond where we visited our sister company Fokker Landing Gear. Our guide for the day was Manuela Snijders, a MRO (Maintenance-Repair-Overhaul) Engineer – New Capabilities & Innovations. I have to say that I have never experienced such a warm welcome than the one we received here, big shout-out to them and everything they arranged for us.
The trainee group outside of Fokker Landing Gear in Helmond, Netherlands.
Firstly, we got a presentation of the company as well as the trainee-program that they offer at Fokker. It differentiates a bit from ours but the end product is very much like ours, to develop and sustain young graduates within the company. Additionally, we got a tour throughout the manufacturing plant to see what sort of products they produce. You don’t realize how important and advance the landing gears are as well as how much weight they are exposed to. They use a block of metal that weighs about 22 ton and simulate a real-life scenario where the weight is moving 8 m/s onto the wheels. To understand the physics, the block of metal (1/3 airplane) weighs 22,000 kg and moves at 8 m/s toward the ground (which is very fast and unpleasant landing). Making the momentum: 22,000 * 8 = 176,000 kg*m/s. In other words, a large amount of momentum is distributed onto one pair of wheels?!! Hereon, we walked throughout the rest of manufacturing to see their machines and how they produce their products. It was much like our own plant in Trollhättan except for the end product.
Towards the end of our visit, we engaged ourselves with the Fokker employees and former trainees at the plant in a “speed dating” session. Here we got the chance during 5 minutes to engage ourselves in a more in-depth conversation with each individual. We all thought this was a great way of networking to get a deeper understanding of their day-to-day activities. Something that amazed many of us were their way of presenting up-to-date data on screens, involving performance of machines, financial results, health rates as well as working capital
Airbus Space & Defence
For the final stop on our tour through Europe, the trainee group was treated to an inspiring site tour at Airbus Defence & Space in Leiden, Netherlands. While there we were introduced to Senior Systems Engineer, Henk Cruijssen, who taught us about some of the projects and technologies that they work on at Airbus. After a brief presentation, he walked us through a few of their test labs and manufacturing facilities to touch and see the materials that go on their satellites. Before leaving for home, we had a short Q&A with Henk about the aerospace industry and the roles we play.
The trainee group posing in front of the Airbus logo.The trainee group in front of one of the rocket parts assembled by Airbus Space & Defence.
Thank you for this time, and I wish you all the best but more specifically a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!!
Last week was our second activity week when we once again visited a number of exciting companies, this time we took our stuff and went to Germany and the Netherlands. Since there were a lot of different visits, I will only write about three of them in this post.
Since our trainee project is about a workshop tour in a VR environment, we decided to visit a company that works with that, to get a better knowledge in the technology and what we can use. We visited the company Kubikfoto3 in Stuhr outside Bremen. There we met Ole Leifels, who presented their company and some of the projects they have been working with, both educational ones and advertising for different companies. We also got the chance to try some of the project with VR glasses which I thought was really cool, dive into the ocean and find animals in the wild, among other things.
A happy Emelie that got to see a sea lion in VR environment.
We also took the opportunity to visit two different startup companies working in the aviation industry, which was really enlightening as they deal with current issues.
The first startup company we visited was Skel-Ex in Rotterdam, where they develop and manufacture an exoskeleton used on the upper body of those who work in manufacturing, to minimize the risk for ergonomic injuries and increasing productivity. It decreases the burden in the shoulders when working with the arms in a high position with the help of springs.
First, we met with Michael Kuiken who showed us and described their product and their manufacturing. We also got to try it and you really felt what a great relief it gave the shoulders when your arms were high up. Then, Jaap Hoogland gave a presentation about the company, its background and future plans. A really great innovation and a great value to minimize injuries in manufacturing!
Wictor is feeling strong with the exoskeleton.
The second startup company we visited was Aiir Innovations in Amsterdam, founded in 2016, where we met the founders Bart Vredebregt and Miriam Huijser. Their company works with Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a support to maintenance in the aviation industry, for inspections and repairs.
They develop a software program that analyzes video footage and detects automatically the defects in the material such as cracks or bumps. This is used as an extra pair of eyes to the operator during the inspection so that nothing is to be missed and time will be saved. We got to see an example when they filmed turbine blades in a jet engine and the defects were marked directly. It is a great value to a company since it will be a safer inspection that takes less time. Time = money!
The whole gang outside the “village” where Air Innovations has there office.
If you want to read more about these interesting and innovative companies, you can visit their websites:
Things are moving on here at GKN in Trollhättan and we are soon at the well-deserved Christmas holidays. This week we had the opportunity to join some colleagues, doing an internship called ”Tekniksprånget”, and Maria Stavered at F7 Såtenäs, a Swedish military air base.
At Såtenäs we meet our Guide Dag Kjellberg who showed us around some hangars with old aircrafts. Dag has over 1500 flight hours with the Viggen Aircraft and a few hundred with the Gripen aircraft. We had the opportunity to walk around the hangar and see Viggen, Draken, Lansen and many other aircrafts. They are all managed and flown by its ideal organization Swedish Air Force Historic Flight, participating in flight shows all over the world.
SAAB JA 37 ViggenSAAB J37 Draken
Shortly afterwards we went to the Gripen centra, a building at F7 with the duty to promote the Swedish air force and govern the Gripen program. There, we had a lecture of the Swedish air force history by Håkan Brandt a retired pilot with a lot of experience of Viggen. Close outside, the Gripen aircrafts took off and even though we were inside, it was loud!
We headed off to the last hangars, the Gripen hangars and before entering we waited for a Gripen to take off, and we could never imagined the mighty sound of the RM12! The visual aspect of the takeoff was incredible, but the sound of the engine was marvelous! Makes one proud being from Trollhättan. Inside the hangars, Dag and Håkan talked about the cockpit, the clothing, the fire power, agility and much more. We also had the fortune to take two photos of the group in front of two Gripen aircrafts.
In front of a JAS 39 GripenIn the background: the nozzle of the RM12, the engine of Gripen. Made by GKN
It was a very giving visit and we are very glad that we had the opportunity to visit F7 Såtenäs!
Time is flying and we have already been at the company for more than two months now!
As trainees, we received the honor of being referees in two different competitions this week. On Wednesday, me, Nina and Wictor were judges on Visionsdagen, a trade fair that is a final part of the project Gnistan. Gnistan is a cooperation project between Swedish Science Centers, Young Scientists and Vattenfall, with the aim of raising youth’s interest in science and technology, as well as giving them the opportunity to engage in society development.
The competition is based on a challenge in a topic that was “Design Your Energy Smart Future – Smart Water Management” and the groups that participated in this project were students in grade 8 from Strömslundskolan in Trollhättan and Centralskolan in Grästorp. It was really fun to be part of this project and to see the commitment that the young people showed with their well-thought-out ideas. Everything from different home water meters that showed how much water the household has used and what it costs, to treatment plants that can be placed in dirty lakes in poor countries. Some very innovative projects.
The excited referees at Visionsdagen!
Now on Saturday it’s time once again, then we all got the honor to be referees in this year’s edition of First Lego League at Innovatum. This competition is a knowledge and technology competition for young people between the ages of 10-16 and their tasks have been to develope innovative solutions to problems, building and programming a robot and marketing the solution and the team. This year the theme is “Into Orbit”, which means it is all about space and its science. Below you can see a small movie about this year’s edition and the missions that the robot will be able to solve.
It will be very fun and exciting to see alltheir projects!! May the best team win!!
