Aerobloggen

Hi all,

I have during my latest rotation been at the same department as Emelie, but my task has been out of a different sort where I have focused on Additive Manufacturing (AM).

I have gotten the chance to meet many experts within the field of AM at the company and it has been really rewarding with interesting discussions. Well, discussion is maybe farfetched as I had to spend my full focus on taking notes as I am a rookie within the field of AM. But nevertheless I am really grateful for all the inputs and insights that I have received around the topic of additive manufacturing. I got a whole new view of it in a way that is not possible by reading a book.

Anyhow, some of you might wonder what additive manufacturing is, (pause for suspense) I will tell you. Ordinary manufacturing methods usually involves a subtractive method, which means that you have a big piece of metal that you turn and mill until it gets the form that you desire. Usually a lot of material is used up in the process (removed) which puts a high load on the environment, a load one preferably would eliminate! But nevertheless this method has been the traditional method to use as other options are scarce. This changed when additive manufacturing was introduced to the market, which is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing.

Additive manufacturing works by deposition of layer-by-layer until the desired part has been constructed, which you specify with the help of 3D-CAD. Today, you can perform the manufacturing of parts in some different ways and there exists seven different technologies to perform additive manufacturing. You can construct parts in plastic as well as in metal, however metal manufacturing is still energy intense which is unavoidable. In metal AM there are several different ways in which the material can be added to the manufacturing process, you can do it either with wire or powder. When using wire, you need to add the material locally to the build, where a laser is melting the tip of the wire. Using powder you get two options. You can add it locally just as in wire manufacturing, a nozzle deposits the material locally and a laser then melts the powder in place. You can also use a bed of powder where a laser, or another energy source, then sweeps the bed where the part is to be built and a component emerges towards the end. The part is then build “within” the bed itself. Whichever way you do it, some post-processing is required to achieve the desired finish.

Innovation and technology has always been the forefront at GKN Aerospace where we as a company always strive to attain knowledge and experience within different fields. This enables us to tailor-design a manufacturing process for our product portfolio. For example, we have a goal to construct our space components with the help of AM, which will usher our portfolio into the next generation. If you want to read more about our AM capabilities and goals, you can follow this LINK.

I started at the company as a graduate engineer in 2009, and later became an industrial Ph.D student who researched the company’s innovation capability. At that point, about ten years ago, it was mostly incremental innovation, small development steps that were made. One of the few radical innovations that I could find examples of in the industry was winglets. The winglets were something that even the passengers could see was slightly different, when the aircraft wings at the ends was bent upwards. Today, ten years later, we work with hydrogen engines, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), various types of additive manufacturing and more. Technologies that are radically changing the entire industry and its manufacturing. And the driving force in these innovational steps is not just money, but the ongoing climate crisis.

Suddenly, the whole industry has a sense of urgency! We have realized that if we want be in the business in the future, we must change to more sustainable flights. If we are to continue to attract young people to come and work with us, we must work in a different way. One might think that our industry has undeservedly been given the role as the “bad guy” in the climate crisis. Aviation today accounts for about 3% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, but with an increasing middle class in Asia who, like the western world, wants to travel, it is predicted that the small number will increase significantly in the future. So regardless of whether we are the “bad guys” today, we will be the “bad guys” in the future if we do not change.

It is now it’s happening. The creation of the radical innovations. That dramatic change in the industry that we will be able to remember and hopefully be proud of. It is now that the company needs everyone who cares about a sustainable world. It is not a matter of the sustainability work being done by a few people who have it written into their job description, but it needs to be done by everyone. Because even though the industry today places a great deal of focus on the climate, it must not be at the expense of other sustainability factors. How sustainable are we really if we achieve climate neutrality for our products during use, but at the same time risk the safety of our employees in manufacturing, buy materials from child labor in Congo, have a significantly larger proportion of material waste compared to the amount of materials delivered to customers, or ignore in that environmentally hazardous substances are released into the nature around our sites. A lot is being done, everything from technology projects on hydrogen propulsion, testing of how RM12 is affected by SAF, repair methods with Laser Metal Deposition Powder (LMD / DED), reduced buy-to-fly with LMD wire, weight reduction with Powder Bed Fusion, Life cycle analyzes, qualitative sustainability assessment tools, tools that evaluate material criticality, global Sustainability work streams, Sustainability Champions, the creation of educational materials, Connected Women, Environmental plans, and more and more. But we are also constantly finding new unexplored areas, more things that we need to do. Sustainability is complex, which is why the responsibility and work cannot be placed on a few people. It is now we are needed at the company, we who are passionate about a sustainable future! Do you want to be part of changing the direction of the industry?

// Johanna Nylander, Senior Research Engineer and Graduate Engineer 2009

Hello everyone!

With the spread of Covid-19 in Västra Götaland steadily increasing for the past few weeks, most of us at GAS have gone back to working from home after the Christmas break. Some people enjoy it, while others do not. It is easy to end up in a negative spiral when you have your office, gym and home behind the same door, and you easily forget the meaning of the word routine. With that said, we hope that we can be back in the office again soon and we have a very exciting spring (March) ahead of us, which makes it easier to keep our spirits up.

My second rotation, which started around Christmas, is in the Lean department. Elias told you briefly about the department in his previous blogpost, which was the department for his first rotation. However, the focus of our rotations have been very different. In my master’s, Quality and Operations Management, we had a course in Six Sigma that certified me as a Six Sigma Black Belt. Without going into too much detail, Six Sigma is about implementing improvement projects using different tools and there are different certification levels (White Belt, Yellow Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt and Master Black Belt). According to the global Lean Academy at GKNA, they now want to increase the proportion of certified Green Belts and Black Belts to improve GKNA’s way of working with systematic problem solving. My role in the department is to assist my supervisor in her project to become a certified Black Belt and thus Trollhättan’s Site Black Belt Representative, and to coach ongoing Green Belt projects. I will also have the opportunity to participate as a co-facilitator during the Lean Foundation trainings when the restrictions ease again, a training that will be held for all employees to increase their knowledge about Lean.

Take care.

/Moa

Hey!

After a much needed Christmas holiday, we are now well rested and excited for 2022, the year when everything hopefully changes for the better and we will not have to hear phrases such as “due to the current circumstances” and “new restrictions”.

Even though we officially started our second rotation a few weeks before Christmas, it has now finally started to gain some real momentum when everyone is returning from their holiday. My new department is rather diverse, and they work with everything from identifying new technologies to managing the company’s patents and mapping the effects our products have on the environment. My supervisor works a lot with the latter, and my assignment during the upcoming months consists of two parts. The first part is to create a life cycle assessment on one of our products. A life cycle assessment, or LCA, means that you investigate the life of a product, from raw material to recycling, which you can see in the picture below. This is something we want to create for all of our products here at GKN Aerospace in order to gain more knowledge and awareness about what effects our products have on the environment. I will model this LCA in a software called GaBi, so during these first few weeks of the rotation I have completed a tutorial to try to learn the program since it is completely new to me.

The second part of my assignment is to update a sustainability tool that is used at GKN Aerospace when designing and developing new products and technologies to make sure that the sustainability perspective is not forgotten. The aspect of the tool I am working with deals with materials and material choices. This is very important because we want to avoid materials that, for example, are conflict minerals or that will be difficult to have access to in the future, something this tool is trying to visualize. For this assignment, I have had to upgrade my Excel skills, and I have also tried some VBA (programming in Excel), which has been a lot of fun!

May 2022 be a great year!

/Emelie

Hello again everyone!

What wonderful winter weather we have had during the last weeks. Sadly, the snow is already melting and warmer degrees are anticipated. However, the Christmas feeling that the graduates have remains strong and we wanted to share it with our dear graduates from previous years. We therefore started off the week with a Christmas Mingle with mulled wine, gingerbread and good music out in the rain!

As the year comes to an end, a short break on the blog is also approaching. We will be back and updating again after the Christmas break. Several exciting posts are awaiting, so don’t forget to keep a lookout here on the blog.

The graduates of 2021 wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Take care and see you soon.

Hi everybody!

As my colleagues mentioned in their posts, we are currently on our first rotations of the graduate program. My first rotation is at our Lean department. My main focus during this rotation is our deployment of our Lean Operating Model (LOM), which will enable us to deliver operational excellence throughout our organization.

In addition to our daily duties at our rotations, we have several other responsibilities as trainees. Among other things, we are responsible for administrating the master theses that we have at GAS, conducting events for our trainee alumni group, writing posts for our trainee blog, attending career fairs and other events.

This weekend, my trainee colleagues and I partook in an event named First Lego League. First Lego League is an event where children between the ages of 10-16 are introduced to science, technology, engineering, and math through a hands-on project.  The objective of this project was to program a robot to maneuver a course and perform tasks along the course to obtain points.

 In addition to this, they proposed a new innovative idea to solve pollution associated with cargo transportation. During the event, we acted as rules officials and judges. We made sure that all the participants conformed to the rules and scored them based on how well they had performed their project, their technological solution, and their core values. It showed a lot of promise to see how well they performed, especially considering their relatively young age! These types of events are crucial for us as an aerospace company. Encouraging children to pursue their interest in STEM fields lays the foundation to create the next generation of engineers! To emphasize how important we think this is, the winning team was awarded a scholarship of 12000 SEK. Now, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that they manage to win the regional finals in Norway against our Nordic neighbors!

As Alex mentioned in his post, our next event together will be the digital career fair Armada. Being an ambassador for GKN Aerospace, attending these type of fairs are an important marketing activity that we perform. I, for one, am excited to have conversations with students nearing the end of their studies and convey what GKN Aerospace can offer them as a future employer! If you are a student at KTH and are interested in the aerospace industry, make sure to check out our virtual booth at Armada!

Till next time,

Elias

Hello!

I am Darshana and I am very happy to be writing for this blog today. I am one of the three UK 2021 graduates, and you can see us in the photo below. We are all based at the Global Technology Centre in Bristol for our first placement.

On the left is Danielle. She is from Cameroon and studied an integrated Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering at Aston University. She is currently working in the Horizon 3 Future Flight team on a project, which aims to develop a hydrogen-powered system for UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System). As part of her role, she has been designing 3D models of components that will be combined to form the overall UAS. Alongside her role, she is excited to work with young people as a STEM Ambassador as an advocate for pursuing careers in STEM, notably, engineering.

On the right is Zaryab. He is from Pakistan and grew up in Scotland. He studied an Integrated Master’s Degree in Aero-Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Zaryab is currently working within the Future Flight team, and is focusing on a novel eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) concept capable of transporting many passengers using electric power. So far, Zaryab’s favourite part of the programme has been the opportunity to explore a breadth of topics alongside his core project. This has included looking at hydrogen power, supporting with financial studies and working on creating a life-cycle assessment on GKN products as part of the sustainability work streams. He is also exploring the opportunity to carry out STEM outreach with the local community.

I am from Mauritius and I grew up in London. I studied Physics at King’s College London. During a summer internship, I had the opportunity to work on aircrafts and it helped me decide that I wanted to work in the aerospace field. I did my Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering at Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France, specialising in composite materials. For my first placement at GKN, I am working in additive manufacturing, specifically on the Laser Metal Deposition by wire cell. It is very exciting to work on this innovative technology, researching new ideas that can be developed into practical applications at GKN. I am really enjoying my time at GKN. It is great to talk to colleagues who are passionate about their projects, and who are always willing to answer my questions. Like Danielle and Zaryab, I am also looking forward to joining the STEM outreach programme.

There are always opportunities to get involved in exciting projects at GKN. Last month, I was asked to take part in the GTC inauguration event. I met the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, and it was a surreal experience! We talked about the graduate programme and I accompanied them to do lay-ups of carbon-fibre sheets for Resin Transfer Moulding. I was impressed to see how well informed Boris Johnson was on composite structures. He asked interesting questions about carbon fibres and their transformation into the strong and rigid structures that are used on aircrafts.

It has been an eventful couple of months and I am eager to see what comes next. I am especially looking forward to finally meeting the graduates from Sweden and the US in-person, after many virtual meetings!

Take care,

Darshana

Hi, I’m back!

This week I’m extra thankful for being back in more southern parts of Sweden. Friends in Luleå reported the first 4 decimeters (you’ll have to translate it yourself) of slushy snow while I was enjoying my morning coffee in the sun.

After on-boarding, workshop practice and teambuilding we have soon completed the third week in what will be the greater part of our traineeprogram, our rotations on-site in Trollhättan. The first 10 weeks everyone will be spending at their home department before exploring new departments based on personal interest and opportunities. My home department is at Strategy & Business Innovation which is a part of Business Line Engines meaning that we work globally to support all of our 14 Engine sites even though the team currently is based in Trollhättan. My first rotation consists of two parts. One of them is working on the yearly plan for Engines and the activities the company must perform to meet the requirements towards owners, government, customers and employees. The other one is working with the digitalization team towards a conceptual factory of tomorrow and a cost estimation based on the function we forecast will be crucial.

First few weeks has been a lot about meeting people in different departments of the company, gaining an understanding of the strategy work and abbreviations everywhere. The welcoming has been great and it’s amazing that every person we meet takes time to talk about their role and surprisingly often they have a connection to the trainee program. Additionally, Robin (2020-trainee) have tricked Elias and myself to start playing padel tennis, we’ll see how long my knees will withhold.

The first rotation has barely started but it’s about time to start thinking about what department we would like to spend our next rotation on. But we will have to talk more about that in another post.

Are you interested in the Traineeprogram or just curious about what we’re doing in Trollhättan? Come by our digital showcase at Armada and we’ll take it from there!

Take care!

/Alex

Hello Hello!

Mid-October is here and autumn is making its entrance again. The leaves are changing colors on the trees, the days get shorter, and the rain pours down in copious amounts. Dull times according to many – but persevere, because soon it will be Christmas.

To break away from everyday life, we trainees have spent two days at Bohusgården Hotell & Konferens (aka coffee, sweets and ice cream in large quantities) in Uddevalla. These two days have been gilded by sunlight and a focus on development, both individually and as a group. During the first day, we got to know each other better through exercises linked to group dynamics. We were also visited by Christopher Sörensen from HR who helped us identify and discuss the group’s individual and common strengths. In the evening, spa and good food awaited, as well as a few intense rounds of billiards and shuffle board.

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The second day began with a case to practice our ability to solve problems in groups. After that, we discussed our and the company’s goals and expectations for the trainee program. We were also visited by Fredrik Wallin and Peter Stommendal from the Strategy department, who presented GKN Aerospace Engine’s overall strategy and vision, which put our future work in a larger context.

It was two very fun and intense days where we, among other things, learned many new things about each other. Now we will continue our first rotation and next week there will be a post from Alexander about his time within the Strategy department.

See you later!

Ps. Are you looking for a master thesis? Do not forget to view the project proposals offered by us at GKN Aerospace in Trollhättan here!