Aerobloggen

During the current week Taining Days have been an ongoing event for many of the technical departments at GKN Aerospace in Trollhättan. Training Days is a biannual event at which the employees get a chance to learn more about subjects which they perhaps don´t work with on a daily basis. The lectures have teached us about everything from our current strategies and ongoing research and development projects, thru negotiation techniques, lean strategies and Excel commands to employee involvement and mental stress reduction. Most of the educators have been local experts working at GKN here in Trollhättan, but guest lecturers from Volvo Trucks and our Dutch sister company Fokker have also visited us to share their knowledge and experiences.

As recently recruited graduate engineers we are especially encouraged to participate in the courses and learn as much as possible. Personally, I most of all appreciated the inspiring lecture in negotiation skills which gave us valuable instruments for coming negotiations with suppliers and customers regarding contracts and technical requirements. Even better, these strategies are equally useful at a personal level in debates with parents, partners and future children!

To be given the opportunity to participate in all the stimulating educations which GKN offer, also outside Training Days, is a privilege that proves that the company truly invests in our growth on both a professional and personal level!

Like the other trainees, I have just started my first internship at my home department, namely the Supply Chain. I work in a group called Supplier Quality Assurance, SQA. In brief, our work activities strive to handle suppliers and collaborate with them so that together we can achieve the right level of quality. For me personally, I have during my first two weeks instigated my work by diving into historical data with the aim of trying to analyze trends and synergies in the data in time series of a few years back. As an analytical person, and with a background in Lean Six Sigma, this has truly been a great way to get into the environment of Supply Chain and learn more about how we have reached the point where we are today. But this work is also support ourselves and our suppliers to raise our perspectives and be more long term in our way of working.

My biggest impression during these two weeks have primary been how amazing GKN and supply chain is as a workplace. As an SQA at GKN you operate to a large extent on a global market, with customers spread in many countries and continents. If you as a reader is an student and thinking about future professions, I really advise you to reflect on supply chain if you like to meet new people, want to work in a global market and enjoys to be in the middle of events.

The experienced blog readers may be aware that the young graduates every year conduct a side mission parallel with our trainee program. We have just been served the outline for this project, and I promise that it seems incredibly exciting! I eagerly look forward to get started on this project together with my colleagues, but right now i will not reveal anymore, but maybe by the missionwe will meet soon? Are you curious about what the mission is about, I advise you to continue to follow the blog for more information in the upcoming posts.

 

See you soon / Niclas Persson

The time has come for the last person in the graduate group to take the stage! Like for my fellow colleagues you can find out more about me and my background in the tab The young graduate program à Our young graduates.

I am the second graduate engineer belonging to the International Graduate Program (IGP), and I will, just like David, stay at my department for a consecutive 6 month period. GKN Aerospace consists of three branches, namely Military, Commercial and Space. I am employed at the Commercial Military department. It will be extremely interesting and exciting to get the possibility to be a part of a, to me, new field!

I am now part of project group together with some very eminent people. The purpose of this group is to work with something called export control. What is that you ask?

Export control means that we as a company knows WHAT is delivered to WHOM and that there exist relevant licenses for every export made. It is not only export of hardware in the form of actual details that are subject to export control rules but also things like drawings, knowledge and oral information. Everything subjected to export control regulations is given a class depending on how “secret” they are. The highest export class is given to military products whilst commercial products can be given a lower export class. A license requirement is put on every product based on the export classification. There is a plentitude of different licenses that can be applied for depending on the purpose of the export.

If GKN Aerospace for example wants to buy a military product from a company I the US and subsequently ship it forward to another country an ITAR license is needed. An ITAR license is the license given to the most secret military products in the US. This license must specify both that GKN Aerospace import this product and that we are allowed to ship it forward to the specific country. If we also want to be a part of future maintenance on the product a special license is needed for that as well. To further complicate things the US and Europe use different classification systems that have to be kept in mind.

During the next 6 month I will driving a project with the purpose of building a system support to how we handle export control. This will be done to simplify the process and to minimize the amount of manual work leading to a decreased risk of errors during the process.

This is a very complex but important area and I have so far only scratched the surface. I am very much looking forward to plunge right in to the exciting field of export control!

Hey everyone! I am among the last of the graduates to introduce myself, Joel Larsson is my name. If you want to know more about me click here. As the previous writers have indicated, there have been some really interesting weeks here at GKN Aerospace, with everything from study visits to leadership practices. Slowly, we are now starting to acclimatize to each of our own home departments, where we will start working after the graduate program finishes.

Currently, I am working in the Hot Structures department together with experts in the fields of aerodynamics, configuration and thermodynamics. As the name of the department indicates, the work here is focused around the hot parts of the engine. By hot parts we often mean critical engine components that are exposed to high pressures and temperatures, i.e. parts like the combustion chamber, turbine exhaust case and those parts in-between. (For some quick e-learning in the subject of jet-engines, click here) Critical components require, not too surprisingly, more thorough processing.

As mentioned before, GKN Aerospace are present in approximately 90 % of all aircrafts, and as a tier one supplier to the aerospace industry a wide range of requirements concerning product safety, production and organization need to be met. The review process to ensure robust processes throughout the organization are extensive, and leaves nothing to chance. So passengers around the world can feel safe when leaving ground.

To ensure that external and internal demands from authorities and customers are met, GKN have OMS (Operational Management System). OMS include descriptions of how to best operate in order to meet demands and satisfy customers. It covers everything from business development and sales, to engine maintenance and product development. To increase the effectiveness in all processes throughout the company, it is possible to change the operation descriptions. In this way, OMS becomes an empirical platform that helps GKN to optimize its processes, and at the same time, guarantee the satisfaction and safety of customers and passengers.

In my opinion, the possibility to safely, fast and with minimum environmental mark be able to travel is at the very core of human freedom. To be part of this process, i.e. to increase peoples freedom by enable safe and effective flight travels around the world, is both satisfying and exiting.

Now it is my turn to write a post – great! Our first activity week (which Andreas mentioned in the previous post) has just come to an end. It is during these activity weeks that we, among other things, can visit companies. In the beginning of this week we were in Linköping visiting ACAB (Applied Composites AB) and in Solna visiting SAS.

ACAB is owned by GKN and manufactures various products and components using composite materials. The composite materials produced at ACAB consists of long threads, so called fibers, made of carbon, kevlar or glass and are kept together by different types of plastic. A great advantage with composites is that they are light-weight and that they could well replace metal in many applications. It was fun to see a different type of production compared to what we have seen at GKN in Trollhättan. In particular, the material aspect of the visit was very interesting; to learn more about composite materials and its applications!

After the visit at ACAB, we drove our minibus to Solna where we met Kamran Chohan from the Lean office at SAS. He told us a lot about how SAS is working with Lean and how they are constantly striving towards fulfilling their customers’ demands and wishes. We found it very interesting to hear the thoughts and reasoning of an airline. Usually, you are on “the other side”, being a customer to the airline. Also, SAS is our end customer as they buy airplanes with engine components manufactured by GKN and so it was interesting to see what happens with the final product. By the way, did you know that in 90% of the world’s commercial flights, there are at least some component manufactured by GKN? I think that is really cool!

We are very happy with the first two company visits, we learned a whole lot and we look forward to getting to know more companies in the future! What we were up to during the remainder of our first activity week will Joakim tell you in the next post.

It´s now time for the next member of the graduate group to write his first blog post. If you would like to know more about me and why I now find myself here at GKN Aerospace there is more to read under the Our young graduates-tab.

In contrast to the previous blogger David and the rest of my fellow young graduates, I have not spent the last two weeks on the shop floor. Because I’ve already, before my university studies, been working a year with the service of jet engines, I instead get the opportunity to start ahead of time at my home department.

My placement is at the manufacturing engineering within the civil markets. This department mainly consists of product engineers and project managers. To state it shortly, everything we do aims at achieving a high quality production with the best possible efficiency. As an example my department develops new production concepts and investigates which equipment that needs to be obtained when a new product is put into production. Close collaboration with our suppliers regarding quality and technical specifications is also a continuously ongoing project. Another very important part in our commitment is process monitoring, in order to ensure the best possible quality.

One very interesting technical tool that I´ve been working with during my first two weeks is inspection with the help of 3D-scanning. This means that the actual part is scanned and modelled in all three dimension with very good accuracy (down to one thousand of a millimeter!). The created virtual model is then compared with the corresponding CAD-model to ensure the supreme product quality. A very fascinating technique to say the least, which you can learn more about in the short video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtMQA41Vlhs

The first weeks at GKN Aerospace have been very exciting and I´ve already learned a lot. I now look forward to encounter much more technics during my coming weeks at my home department. First though, a so called activity week awaits us young graduates during which we, among many other things, will visit other companies in the aerospace business. Read more about these adventures in the upcoming posts!

Hi! This is my first post here at the blog. From now on I will share information that I find interesting, from my work as well as activates related to work. Please take your time to read my introduction under Our young graduates if you are interested in my journey to become a GKN graduate.

How have the first weeks at GKN been then? It´s been exiting, informative and fun. So far I am most impressed by the pride all employees has for the products produced here in Trollhattan, from shifts to mangers. I couldn’t even imagine that!

Soon I will start my time at the “home” department. In my case it will be at the same department for all my six month here at GKN Aerospace and the department is called Programs. Programs are easiest described as small companies within the company. In my case the Program are responsible for all activities related to Rolls-Royce. To get a better understanding for these products my time in the factory has been focused on these products. Last week I followed the morning shift in the factory, learning about lathing and milling.

This week I have continued by visiting the operations taking place right before the products are ready to be shipped of. It has been a tight schedule but time has been wisely spread over the past weeks.

Last but not least I would like to thank all of my colleagues that I have met in the production so far. You are all making a great job!!

Hi and welcome to a new year with the Aeroblog!

Since the start in 1986, we have now reached a year where the graduate program celebrates its thirtieth birthday. The familiar reader might also deduce that it is time to install a new group of Graduate Engineers for 2016/17. For this year, the program has undertaken a new development in extending the overall program length from twelve to sixteen months. And beyond the original five positions in the GKN Aerospace Sweden’s program, we this year have an additional contribution of two participant from GKN’s International Graduate Program (IGP). You can see us on the updated banner at the top of the page. If you wish to find out more about us, please click on the following link

After the first week’s introduction, we are now undergoing a two week internship in different manufacturing facilities. We are thereby striving to learn more about the products and processes that we manufacture and apply here in Trollhättan. More about these two weeks will be elaborated in the following posts.

Shortly, we will also be able to present our side mission of the year, a more thorough presentation about ourselves, and of course a great mixture of exciting people and experiences that we will cross path with on our journey.

Lastly, it is with a warm heart and deep respect we gratefully thank the Graduate Engineers of 2015/16, and we wish you the best of luck on your future carriers!

 

See you soon!

Young Graduates 2016/17

They seem to be everywhere; on the mobile phone, the shirt and even on the toothbrush. The labels proclaiming “Made in China” is of course what I’m referring to. In fact, China accounts for about a quarter of the world´s manufacturing output in terms of value. In some industries, the country is predominant and manufactures for example 70 percent of the world’s mobile phones and 60 percent of its shoes. The fact that China often is called the factory of the world is thus not surprising.

China has quickly emerged as the dominant country of manufacturing. In 1990, the country accounted for less than three percent of the world´s production and has now, as earlier mentioned, about 25 percent. The reasons for this startling growth are many, and it is difficult to pinpoint the most important one. However, it is obvious that the country’s low labor costs, favorable tax laws, well-developed business ecosystem and the permissive environmental regulations have contributed to its success.

During my time here in China, I have had the opportunity to experience the manufacturing industry both through our own factories and through subcontractors’ factories. I have seen big differences in terms of working environment and capability during my visits. For example, I have visited run-down factories with really simple machineries, but also very modern factories with automated production lines. Among the more modern examples is GKN’s plant in Taicang. This factory was started last year and is currently being outfitted with new equipment for the mass production of various components within the Land Systems segment. The factory is of high standard and new production lines can be designed with great freedom, which bodes for good efficiency.

If China will maintain its position as the world’s predominant manufacturer I leave unsaid, but because of the ever-growing pool of experience and the strong desire to constantly achieve new successes, I am not surprised if I´ll see those “Made in China” labels anywhere and everywhere also in the future.

Time flies by and this will be the last update from the life in sunny California. This is my and Mikaels last week in Santa Ana and we’re in the process of finalization, presentation and documentation of our projects over here. The last three months has been interesting and both me and Mikael has learned a lot and got to experience a lot during the weekends.

As we’re in the process of finalizing everything at work we’re also enjoying the beach as much as we can. This week there’s even more tourists and surfers than normally due to Vans US Open of Surfing. This weekend Mikael and I will move out of our apartment in Huntington Beach and it is our turn to go back to Sweden again.

Thank you GKN in Santa Ana and beautiful Huntington beach for three amazing months, maybe we’ll meet again..