Aerobloggen

Last Thursday, something rather unusual happened here at GKN: 45 girls of ages 13 to 19 years came to the company! The mission of the day was to explain the question that always appear – what does an engineer really do?

The visit was arranged in collaboration with the voluntary organization IGE Day, where IGE stands for “Introduce a Girl to Engineering”. The purpose is, as the name applies, to get more women to the engineering profession. GKN is probably not unique with more male engineers and operators than female, and even if the number of female engineering students is growing in Sweden, the most people I have spoken with agree that we need more women in the engineering business.

However, the number of women in the business you can discuss forever, but the focus of the day was of course on the exciting girls that had arrived! Most of them were there together with their class and their teacher, but some of the girls were there on their own. At arrival at 9 AM they got some fruit and juice which they brought to the aula where I greeted them welcome. Thereafter some of our female engineers spoke about their background, their way to the engineering profession and what they do today. After the presentation we went together to our big gymnastics hall to find out how you can think when you are about to develop a product and produce it.

The girls were divided into teams and got instructions to fold one paper plane each. A deep concentration and silence appeared in the hall when all the girls got to work. Each team tested their paper plane and the planes that flew the longest were chosen to be further developed. The teams created a drawing of how their plane was folded and was then assigned to mass produce the plane according to the drawing. They also got to divide the folding among them and was asked to takt the production flow, all according to Taylor’s principles and the LEAN work of GKN. The teams also got to switch drawings with each other to try to understand someone else’s drawing, something that is not always that easy. After one hour the hall was full of paper planes and it was time to move one to the next activity…

Again our visitors were divided into groups, but this time the groups were departed. The girls in the ages of 12 to 15 were sent to our Industry School which lies in our manufacturing facilities where Magnus Ek took them for a guided tour. They were also given a metallic ring and got their names written on them.

The older girls went either to one of our lecture rooms with computer or to the material lab. The latter group were introduced to the microscopes and learned about how metals look like up close. The group in computer lecture room got instead to try our CAD software. It turned out to be harder than it looks like but most of the girls were engaged in the task with enthusiasm and talent.

After the group activities the girls were offered lunch and then the visit was over. Some journalists from the local newspapers were invited and interviewed some of the girls, who thereafter happy went back to their schools. Did we succeed with our mission to explain what an engineer does? We think so, based on what some of the girls commented in the end of the day. Hopefully we have inspired some of them to choose engineering or technical educations in the future!

During the spring we got asked by the System Engineers at Kongsberg if we wanted to come and visit their site. Of course we wanted and after some time we could set up a suitable date. Our hosts where Annette and Kristoffer and they had a busy schedule planned for our two days of visit. The set-up for their employment as a Systems Engineer is that they divide their time between studies and working at GKN. When they are finished they will get their Master and also have achieved good overall view of the company.

During our stay we got to learn more about their role at the company, general information about the site and presentations about different initiatives and projects that they are running. The evening of the first day ended with bowling together with some additional people from the company. I am proud, though a bit surprised to say that after a hard battle over two series I announce myself the unofficial champion due to the highest score in one series (let’s forget about the team competition). We had two fantastic days at Kongsberg and hopefully we get the opportunity to show our own site and city at a later time.

So back to Kongsberg, the products manufactured here are mainly ones that require advanced manufacturing methods, for example TEC:s, fixed guide vanes and shafts.

At first thought shafts might seem like a simple part to manufacture, I would lie if I said that I was any exception. What I didn’t think of was the fact that the shafts are hollow. Due to their length, a long arm is needed when machining the inner side which gives cause to vibrations in the tool. This is a major concern since rotating parts have very high demands on tolerances. To get around these problems a number of technical solutions are used to be able to secure the quality of the product.

Also I found the official GKN Norway company presentaion if you want to learn a little bit more about the site.

As you might now, the application period for the next year’s young graduate program is up and running. For engineers, this Tuesday 31st of March is the last day of application. So if you have not already applied, do it now!

New to this year is that we also have one place for one Economic. Since this information is posted so late, the application period for this place is enhanced to 5th of April. So all of you with background within Economics: apply!

Links for application you can find here.

Today, we had the honor to receive a whole class of French students and their professors from IUT Cachan in Paris, who were on a tour through corporate Sweden. The students were pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Production Engineering and were interested in our work with material handling and Lean production. Therefore, we were proud to be able to show our workshops and Lean department, as well as talk about the progress that we have made through the use of Lean tools. Since not all of the visitors were familiar with the aerospace industry, we also took some time to explain the basics of the jet engine and what parts that we produce within GKN. Trollhättan’s great spring weather also only made it easier to offer them a nice visit!

 

After a weekend that consisted of a ridiculous amount of sleeping (the trip to Kiruna demanded more of me than I realized!), we are now back in Trollhättan again. This time I’ve ended up at Anders’s home department Commercial, where I have started to explore the world of business agreements and economy. A couple of years ago I took a course in Business Economy and that knowledge is well suited now! I have only just started looking into the documents I will study during these six weeks, but I have already come across expressions like balance sheet, discounts, present value calculation, budgets and a lot more.

Exactly where my work will end up I barely know for myself yet, but I know that it is very interesting to see how an agreement with our customers might look like and how much it is to keep in mind. It might not be my speciality here, but I do believe that the more you know about your projects, the more cross-functional you can work. And cross-functionality is always good!

I do not have so much more to say for now, but I do want to remind you that the application for the next year’s graduate program is still open, so go there and apply right away!

The second day of activities continued as Anders mentioned with a visit to LKAB. Here we were given a guided tour of their facilities and we also got to visit their Visitors Mine. About 4000 people work at LKAB and if you add all the other companies working towards them you understand the importance this company has to Kiruna.

During the visit we got to learn about the mining process and how they create their iron ore pellets which are about 80 percent of LKAB’s production. It is very fascinating when you hear the volume numbers that is processed and shipped every day. Because the mining is done deep underground instead of in an open pit it puts very high demands on the operations. The Visitors mine which we got to visit were about 500 meters below ground, but the actual mining is performed at twice the depth!

Another interesting aspect is that the iron vein goes down in an angle towards the city. If future mining should be possible, a large part of the town must actually have to be moved for security reasons. This is an enormous project which will be very interesting to follow in the future.

For the last day of our trip we finally got some nice weather. Too bad this didn’t happen a few days earlier since we got reports that the chance for northern light was high during our two previous nights. I guess this gives an excuse to return back to this beautiful place another time in the future. Our final stop was at IRF which is the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. Its primary tasks is to carry out basic research, education and associated observatory activities in space physics, space technology and atmospheric physics.

At IRF we were welcomed by Charles Lue, PhD and he gave us an introduction to the research and previous projects that they had been a part of.

Our visit ended with a company presentation for interested students, focused on the Graduate programme. Hopefully we caught their interest and will see some of them at our site in Trollhättan in the future.

Summarizing the trip I would say that we had a lot of fun and personally learned from all the companies that we visited.

Hope to see you again Kiruna!

We decided to spend our third and last activity week in Kiruna, where Christian has been our guide after his time at the campus Luleå University has in the city. The rest of us were rookies north of the polar circle!

After flying up on Monday morning, we drove out to the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi just outside of Kiruna, as we did not have any planned study visits until Tuesday morning. The hotel, complete with a church and 55 rooms in ice and snow, was pretty impressing and the guided tour was ended with a mandatory drink in the ice bar.

The Tuesday schedule was more packed, with visits both high and low at Esrange Space Center and the underground LKAB mine. The Esrange rocket launch base was first up in the morning and an especially nice visit as the work there is related to what we do down in Trollhättan. The base was founded in the 1960’s for research on the northern lights, aurora borealis, but focus has with time shifted towards all kinds of research on space, the atmosphere or weightlessness. The largest rocket currently launched at Esrange, the 16 m high Maxus, can for example reach heights of 800 km and offer 12 minutes of weightlessness before falling down to earth again.

 

It is time for a new graduate trip. It feels like we have been living in a suitcase the last few weeks, but at least we have fun. Right now when I’m writing this, we are sitting at Arlanda airport in Stockholm and waiting for the flight that will take us to the far north of Sweden and Kiruna.

The time since Christmas has flown away and just as Christian wrote, the third internship has just ended. I was, just as Christian, at the Research and Technology department, but with a totally different task. I was asked to look at the aircraft market from a technical view. The number of airliners of the different manufacturers’ backlog was compared to the standard seating; the cabin volume of business jets was compared their respective ranges; and the fan diameters of the engines was compared to their maximal thrust. I have also started to look into the space market, which is also quite interesting! I think I produced some good pictures, but foremost I have learnt a lot about different aircrafts, how the market looks like and how it works, which parameters that are interesting to look at and which politics that affects. My supervisor turned out to be quite an expert in everything about aircrafts and he is more than happy to tell you about it!

Apart from this, the last couple of weeks have been hectic with planning for an upcoming visit from France and the approaching journey to America. I and Anders (especially Anders!) has worked hard with finding a place to live, renting a car, buying air tickets and I’m sure we will get it all together. There are still things to arrange, especially the famous application for Visa, but I guess that will turn out fine as well.

Now, as I said, there will be one week of travelling (I let Anders and Martin tell you more about that) and thereafter our last internship in Trollhättan starts before its time for us to go abroad…

I say goodbye with a nice classic one:

 

It was a while ago since I last wrote anything and some things have happened since then!

First of all, I’ve done my 3rd rotation at the R&T (Research & Technology) department, where I have worked with method development. I have worked with automation and created a working method to integrate some aerodynamics calculations into an automated flow. The idea is that in the future you should be able to automatically create product prototypes from a set of customer demands and requirements on e.g geometry, performance, wight, cost and so on. This will make the process from request to offer a lot quicker and more efficient.

It’s has been really interesting to work with a part of the company that is a bit more abstract and not strictly related to production or any of our current products.

Some other news is that I will be going to our GKN site in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA for my international rotation. I’ll be a part of the introduction of some new product in the production as well as some new quality or production software tool. Much more than that hasn’t yet been decided.

I believe this will be a real adventure and I’m looking forward to experience how it is working in the USA!

Next week we will be traveling north (read Kiruna), so keep an eye out for any articles on what we’ll be doing and seeing there!

/Christian out…

Since you as a graduate trainee belong to a group in the company that most likely has time for unplanned tasks, it is also likely that you get to take part in some unexpected events at work. One such event was the reason that we a couple of weeks ago once again was on our way to the Redditch area in the UK, this time to participate in a workshop regarding GKN’s future on invitation of Nigel Stein himself, Chief Executive of GKN Plc.

The workshop, named Future Thinking, was set to gather 50 promising persons in the ages 25-30 from all over GKN and the five of us were proud to represent Trollhättan and Sweden! Together we would brainstorm around what we saw as important in the world, the industry and at the workplace 10-30 years into the future, and how this could affect GKN. With participants from all over the world, an unconfined task like this could be pretty interesting.

With the help of Cranfield University, the result of this brainstorming did however become fairly concise and we had in two days succeeded in creating seven project groups of eight persons each, all with their own focus area to continue to work in. The projects was in areas like alternative transportation, artificial intelligence, branding and cross-functional work and are now intended to proceed on distance for the next year, with regular debriefings to the Chief Executive Council of GKN. It will be exciting to see what the projects will come up to!