Aerobloggen

You who is a student or have been a student probably recognize yourself in several different programming languages. Programs and languages are many as well as the variations and applications. During my time at Chalmers, the focus was mostly on Matlab and some different simulation and CAD tools. But, as a wise former trainee said in a post a year ago, there is another program that is used everywhere, all the time and are very useful in several ways. Unfortunately it is a bit forgotten in the academic world, in my personal opinion and experience. This program is nothing less than Microsoft Excel.

Excel is so much more than the plus, minus and a tool for nice diagrams. It is a program that in particular can save a lot of time – provided it is used correctly. I wish I had learned more about Excel during my years as a student. Just three months here at GKN, I have discovered many new complex functions and that the programming capabilities of Excel’s Visual Basic are endless. If you have not opened Visual Basic – do it, try it! (There are good exercises on Youtube for all of you who are just as confused as me. =))

Finally – to all of you – if you have the opportunity to take a course in Excel – do it !! =)

After last week’s activities, first as representative of GKN Aerospace on the career fair THS Armada and then on a course together with my group, I am now back at the office. This week was my first week at the new department, I’ve moved in with my dear trainee colleague Daniel at Supply Chain. For about seven weeks I will follow the work at the department, mainly together with my supervisor who’s working as SQA (Supplier Quality Assurance). I am looking forward to this rotation and the new challenges. Parallel to that, I’ve also scheduled a study visit on site for Chalmers Aerospace Club, the visit took place Friday 27th of November, the effort to organize has been very educational and fun. I’ve been talking to many new colleagues here at GKN and learned a lot about our export control regulations.

This was a short update. Maybe you’ll get a new update from me this week since I’ll be out on a business trip.

/ Linn

Good to be back on solid ground! Jet reversal off. Air brakes off. I have moved to Trollhättan. My relocation went well, as it should when moving from some square meters to a few more. My new apartment takes up an entire floor and though I live in the town’s narrowest cylindrical masonry, I have plenty of space between the toilet and elevator. A stone’s throw away is the grocery store and with even less effort, I have the gym and my neighbor, the bowling alley. I’ll save almost three hours a day in travels to work and have suddenly gained some leisure time. Like me, also many of my new friends have settled in town :-P. When moving from a large city to a smaller, I used to think of all the things I would miss. However, so far I am pleased and when I feel like it, the train to Gothenburg still departs regularly. What happens in the trainee program and the job then?

The trainees have already reached the end of the internships you have heard about in previous posts and this week, we’ll (with many exceptions) move our coffee cups into new departments to learn a little more about work, the work and our company. Therefore, I move from the materials lab to work with the spatially and scientifically adjacent process engineers. It is, after all, through manufacturing processes that different materials, the ones I’ve been analyzing before, can be applied and obtain the properties required by our products. I don’t know much about what my duties will be and as much as I’ve enjoyed working at the lab, it’ll be fun to try something different, yet similar 🙂 Have a great day!

Mikael

Forecasts of the aerospace industry shows a clear positive trend. Air traffic is expected to increase steadily during the upcoming decades and be three times larger in 2050 than today. This will be positive for the global economy and allow greater mobility among the world’s population. However, the increase in air traffic is not entirely beneficial, but also brings negative consequences in terms of increased environmental stress. Therefore, we must work proactively and find solutions that are good for both the environment and the air traffic.

Air traffic accounts for about three percent of the total emissions of greenhouse gases, but may account for a significantly larger share in the future because of the estimated growth. In order to reach the environmental goals of not increasing the average temperature by more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, vigorous actions must be taken. The options available are either to reduce demand through emission charges and other market measures, or to reduce emissions through more fuel-efficient aircrafts. The latter alternative is preferable because the former can have a negative impact on the entire aviation industry and for example on the tourist industry. To accelerate the pace of innovation within the aviation industry and reach closer to the goal of fuel efficiency, the European Commission has introduced a program called Clean Sky 2, which GKN Aerospace is involved in.

Clean Sky 2 is a collaboration between the public and private sectors and aims to create technologies for quieter and greener aircrafts. The goal of the program is to reduce CO2, NOx and noise emissions by 30 percent compared to current levels. To achieve this goal, research and development is carried out on both the aircraft structure and engine. Concepts developed include laminar wings and open-rotor Aircraft Engines. Part of the development of the latter technology is done here in Trollhättan.

An open-rotor engine is simply described as a jet engine without a fan case. This enables the use of longer turbine blades and thus provides greater and more efficient airflow through the engine while the weight of the engine itself can be reduced. However, the removal of the fan case means less noise reduction and a greater risk of damage of the airframe in case of a released blade. Engineers are working feverishly to get around these problems, and tests show that we are already on the way of solving the issues. I am sure that we will succeed in developing the technologies required to achieve the set goals. It will not be easy, but through cooperation and passion, innovation will reach new heights and result in a flying future.

Today and tomorrow, you can find me and my collegues at THS Armada in Stockholm. Come to the KTH library where we stand together with GKN Driveline and talk to us!

/Linn

I would like to inform you that I will represent GKN Aerospace at the carrer fair, THS Armada (17-18th of november) at KTH in Stockholm together with GKN Driveline.

I hope to see you there! Ask for Linn!

Some might ask themselves; what does it mean to be a Graduate Engineer? Or, what distinguishes a graduate trainee position against an employment as an engineer?

In terms of work, the biggest difference is that our first year consists of several internships within the company where we have the opportunity of rotation between different departments in order to gain a broad insight into the various areas. In addition to our daily work, we have some other things ongoing, such as study visits both internally at GKN Aerospace as well as externally, parallel to that we operates our own project (more on that in a later post).

Since the basic idea, as I said is that we should gain a broad insight into the whole business, we try to set up meetings with most of the different departments here at GKN Aerospace Trollhättan. During these meetings, different people gets the opportunity to tell us more about what is happening within their department and, for example, tell us about the current issues in their daily business. It gives us the opportunity to get a broad insight even in those areas that we ourselves are not working with, and quite honestly, who really knows what an engineer actually does? My hope is that I have a better answer or at least a greater insight into precisely that question when the year is over.

As an example, this Monday we had a meeting with the purchasing department, where we got to take part in some of their work and the issues, obstacles and opportunities that it means to work worldwide with a large number of different suppliers. For me it was very exciting to hear about this since it is something that is far away from my daily work!

Beside all internal meetings here in Trollhättan, we try to schedule meetings with other interesting external companies. Previously you’ve been able to read about our first activity week that took place in Linköping and Stockholm. Next activity week is planned for Vernon and Papendrecht, but as a supplement to these long way travel visits we try to visit interesting companies represented in the region. Today, we visited my old employer Volvo Trucks in Tuve (Gothenburg). We started the day with a production tour and then get to meet people who work with materials management, production management, and future product planning. All the meetings were very interesting and rewarding – it’s always nice to meet new companies and compare how we are working here at GKN to how other companies are working with similar challenges that we face (although for a completely different product).

I hope this post can provide clearer insight into the graduate engineer program structure here at GKN Aerospace in Trollhättan and that it can be a step towards a better understanding of the variations of the works of an engineer.

Working with the RM12 Engine is inspiring! I have now had the pleasure to work with the RM12 Engine for about four weeks and it feels like the pieces are slowly starting to fall into place. I am mainly working on two different projects related to the RM12, export control issues and Spare part optimization. I have mainly been focusing on the export control issues, which is an area that I am totally unfamiliar with. This of course makes it challenging but also simultaneously very inspiring to explore. My coworkers are doing their best to help me understand these processes by supporting me with necessary information and guidance.

So what is export control then? Export control is related to products with the potential to be used in applications that are designed or modified for the space and military industry, dual use products, products which may be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and those with suspicion to be used in embargo countries. This basically means that products or information related to these products cannot be exported without permission from the supplier’s country of origin. For instance, you are not allowed to convey information to your supplier related to specific a product without having a specific license in place. The same applies for physical transportations. You may not perceive this process as extensively complex, but its rather dynamic as classifications changes due to the Obama Export Control Reform, new products are introduce and licenses needed to be updated.

My task is initially to map all products regulated by export control and the product classification in order to visualize which license these products needs to be exported under. The classification information is possessed by the supplier. I will also take part in creating export control user training for employees within the Military Value Stream. On top of this I will “walk the process”, from order to delivery, in order to obtain a holistic view of the “export control process”.

I can also gladly announce that the planning process for the second activity week is completed 🙂 We are going to visit Snecma, France and Fokker (recently acquired by GKN), Netherland. You will get more details about this trip in the near future 🙂

Take care!

After this week I’ve done four weeks at my “home department” and I have the great honor of working with the process engineers that are working with the manufacturing processes at our suppliers. The engineers are responsible for different fields such as casting, forging, welding and unconventional methods. These weeks I’ve been given an assignment to perform which is mainly executed in the material laboratory, which is very good since I get to know that department too as well as I’m getting to learn about the materials used here at GKN. This also means that I’m spending a lot of time together with Mikael that is the graduate engineer at the Materials laboratory. Parallel to this assignment I get to accompany the process engineers to different meetings regarding their work. As a process engineers you work a lot with both product development and with the Supply Chain organization. I learn a lot of new things every day and I love it, even though I have to be honest with you and admit that I am so tired every night, it is tiring to learn new things. At this point I have two weeks left at my department before new adventures lies ahead and I already looking forward to get back here after next summer!

Next time you’ll hear from me will be in four weeks and I will have moved over to another department due to our rotation within the company.