The UN has presented 17 global goals directed to all of the countries in the world that will help us to achieve four fantastic things year 2030:
To abolish extreme poverty
To reduce inequalities and injustices in the world
To promote peace and justice
To solve the climat crisis
We, the graduates, have created a video that will tell you more about how we at GKN Aerospace work with global goal #9 – Industry, innovation and infrastructure. This video was brought to you by a collaboration with Innovatum here in Trollhättan as studying material for students in the region.
It’s been a while since we trainees wrote
anything here. What has affected this is not so
surprisingly the current situation and that GKN, as well as many other
companies in Sweden, are on furlough for a couple of months. But how is it
really to work during furlough?
Of course it depends
from person to person but for me it has caused some readjustments. Going from
full work weeks to 60% (three days a week) was a strange feeling at first,
because what are you supposed to do during the days off, especially when you
are supposed to avoid public places as much as possible? You can notice that
the slightly older ones have an easier time finding activities to do, fixing
their house, spending more time with their families etc.
This will not
turn into a LinkedIn post with a carpe diem theme with seems to be popular
nowadays, but something I have found very fulfilling has been online courses, a
couple of hours a day. Attending those gives me a feeling that I do something
productive during my longer “weekends”. But that´s what works for me, there are
an abundance of activities you can pursue, it´s all about finding something
that gives you more value.
Lastly, ending
with some good news! We´ve got the news that if the Covid situation have calmed
down a bit we will be going to Bristol this September, to have a development
week (like the one we had in the US) and meet all the other global grads!
3D printing of safety visors for the healthcare sector
During the last two weeks a group at GKN in Trollhättan has been printing safety visors for hospitals, clinics and nursing homes in the nearby region. The printers, which are usually used to manufacture prototypes and tools, have been running non-stop to meet the demand. At the end of this week we will have delivered some 500 visors. We expect the demand to remain high, so we will probably keep making them as fast as we can for a while.
The help has been much appreciated by the healthcare workers and we are happy to be able to contribute. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something!
Our first large delivery was to the ambulance unit at Norra Älvsborgs and Uddevallas hospital. From the left: Martin Thordén – President at GKN Aerospace Sweden, Hampus Olsson, Nina Nordberg, John Eborn, Jasmin Källberg, Jari Lamminluoto.
Last week we received the good news that our proposal of the graduate project got approved by HR. This was instantly celebrated with a super delicious apple pie from the lunch restaurant, which also gave us the positive energy we needed to start with the project right away. The purpose of this project is to increase the awareness of GKN Aerospace Sweden (GAS) as an employer among students and young people throughout Sweden but also strengthen the brand awareness of GAS.
This will be done in two different ways. The first one is focusing on the improvement of our participation at career fairs and upgrading the booth. Tasks such as concept development, order a new booth, refine our brochures and look into new giveaways will definitely be included.
The second part of our project is aimed at modernizing the visitor centre here on site, whereas the goal is to make it more compelling to the visitors and deliver a new concept for how it can look like. We have already a lot of creative thoughts and ideas around this topic, but it will be more fun to reveal them later when things are fallen into the place.
It’s been a busy week
in Trollhättan, both considering activities at our current department rotations
and activities with the trainees.
At my current department I work alongside one of our most senior manufacturing engineers in exciting projects where we are investigating concepts and business cases for future opportunities to introduce additive manufacturing. We also partake in the daily work with one of our existing high volume products, the intermediate compressor case for an engine called PW1100. It is a Pratt & Whitney engine which you can find on the Airbus A320 Neo. It’s a quite different tempo when working close to manufacturing compared to technology development, which is what I did last fall.
With the trainee group we’ve done a lot of preparations for next week, when it’s time for… *drum roll* … Graduate selection! It will be two packed days where we will get to meet our future colleagues. We’ve been waiting eagerly since January!
The last week it has been full focus on the tasks we have at our departments, especially for me and Elin. We have been busy carrying out internal audits for the Intermediate Compressor Case that we manufacture for Rolls Royce’s Trent XWB engine. An internal audit implies that you go through each operation step in detail and tries to find areas of improvement with the help of the operators’ inputs. As a result, we have spent most of the week out in the workshop and gained a deeper understanding for TIG, plasma and LASER welding, which was super cool and interesting!
As most people say, time flies when you are having fun, it is also about time to start planning for our next rotation and I will reveal mine in the coming weeks. Beside that we will soon begin with our graduate project, which we will tell you more about soon.
What a week! Something
you´ve probably noticed with so many blogposts during a short time-span.
Although we haven’t had the time to describe all activities so thought it could
be good with a little summary of the week.
This Monday we went to
Finspång, small city outside Linköping to visit Siemens and their graduates.
They visited us last autumn so this time it was out turn to learn more about
their organization.
We got to see final
assembly of their gas turbines and also a so called “single lift”, which is a
fully assembled gas turbine with control room and much more. It is the heaviest
product Siemens have delivered for several years and weighed over 250 tons, so
was really exciting to witness! We also got insights regarding their push
within AM (additive manufacturing) which gave us a lot of inspiration to bring
back!
Fun fact regarding the
manufacturing in Finspång is that a castle was included in the purchase of the
production plant in the 1800s, which means that the castle has followed all
companies that have taken over the production area since then. Siemens officially
took over 2003 and the castle is today their visitor center as you can see in
our magnificent photo below.
Big thanks for a
really interesting afternoon!
Ps. The cannons located around the castle are there for historical reasons, the land was first used for manufacturing cannons before gas turbines started to be produced.
Trainee-crew outside Siemens visitor center
On Tuesday it was time
for the LARM career fair, almost all graduates where there (Hampus was at
Futurum) and advertised GKN and the Global Graduate Program. It was especially for
us to partake when so many interested and curios students came by!
During Tuesday and Wednesday
it was also the last days at Futurum, I have already written a bit about that
last week but have been really rewarding days. Both through inspiring high
school students and the possibility to improve our presentation skills.
Lastly, we spent Thursday and Friday at “space days” at Universeum in Gothenburg, where we had our VR system and let the visitors try it out, which you can see in the picture below!
Looking ahead it seems
that the graduate activities will slow down a bit which will be quite nice.
Been some fun and rewarding weeks but will be good to be able to put 100%
effort on our rotations!
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? Drop by our booth and we´ll tell you more about us!
PS: Only 6 days left of the application period so don’t forget to apply to the GKN Aerospace Global Graduate Programme 2020. Click here to send in your application!
Time has really
flown by for the trainee-group lately. It feels like something we say quite
often, but now that we have come home from the trip across the pond (January
25th) it has been non-stop of various fun activities. First of all, we have
actually switched rotations, which is a bit wistful because you may not have
gotten get as far as you would have wanted with the project in 10 weeks, but it
is really fun to try something new! It will be really interesting for me to
gain experience within Finance/Business Development as I will work with M&A
(Mergers & Acquisitions).
In addition to
our new rotations we have clearly noticed that the recruitment process is at
full speed, as GKN is participating in four career fairs over the course of 1.5
weeks! CHARM (Gothenburg), Trainee Day (Gothenburg), Hotspot (Karlstad) and
LARM (Linköping). The trainees were at CHARM and will be participating on the
Trainee Day as well as LARM next week, so we hope to see you there!
Lastly, we have taken the opportunity to participate in events to spread the interest in technology and aviation/space to youths. Right now we are participating at Futurum here in Trollhättan, an event orchestrated by Innovatum with the purpose to inspire high school students to continue with their studies and to work in various exciting professions! The event is over 6 days and over 750 students from all over Fyrbodal (Fyrbodal is a fusion of the cities Trollhättan, Uddevalla, Vänersborg and Lysekil, as well as Bohuslän and Dalsland) visit during these days!
A high school student got the opportunity to try our VR-experience
Been extremely fun to be able to talk a bit about my own journey and GKN as well as why the aviation industry and our own technology and products are exciting!
To give you a small taste of what our presentation was about, you can find a short clip below that we have put together. The video shows three companies that all develop so-called eVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing. That is, small electric aircraft that can lift and land vertically, so that they can easily be used in cities. This, if anything, is futuristic technology that is becoming a reality right now!
eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing)
So it has been some hectic and fun weeks that will continue on keeping the same pace for at least another week, so you can expect a lot of updates from us going forward!
