Aerobloggen

The time has come for me, Linn, to make my first contribution to this blog. If you want to know more about me you can find the presentation on this webpage.

The three first weeks in Trollhättan has been extremely educational and fun. It has been a lot of introductions and a short internship in the factory. Now we’re all out on an activity week. At the moment, we’re on a field trip which started out in Linköping where we visited a company called CybAero. A very interesting company that develops and manufactures unmanned helicopters, so called VTOL RPAS (Vertical Take Off and Landing Remotely Piloted Aircraft System). These can for example be used for surveillance of power lines or in marine search operations. It was fascinating to learn about their technology and business as well as to learn their story as an expanding company. Below one can see a photo of us trainees together with Rasmus Lundqvist from CybAero and two helicopter models.

On day number two, we visited Stockholm and GKN Public Affairs (PA) whose office is situated in the city center of Stockholm. PA can be described as the relationship between the organization and stakeholders. These stakeholders can for example be politicians, decision makers, customers and business organizations. One explains organizational policies and views in order to improve the organization’s ability to operate successfully. Hannes Carl Borg and Stefan Hjort at PA gave us an introduction to their work and pointed out that one should always remember that the activity at GKN is highly affected by political decisions, especially regarding the military and space activities. Below you can see a picture from Stockholm of the whole group of Graduate Engineers together with our hosts Hannes Carl Borg and Stefan Hjort.

I would like to use this moment in order to thank both Rasmus Lundqvist at CybAero and Hannes Carl Borg and Stefan Hjort at Public Affairs GKN Aerospace Engine Systems for two very interesting and educational visits. Next stop is SAS HQ, you will hear more about our visit there in the next blog post.

Seven weeks have already passed since I started at GKN Aerospace. My first rotation is at a department responsible for the introduction of new products, estimating cost for new businesses and global projects within GKN Aerospace Engine Systems. It’s at this department where I will start working after the trainee-period.

During the seven weeks I had two assignments. The first assignment is a part of a global project within manufacturing engineering, which aims to enhance delivery precision and cost reduction of poor quality by improving the robustness of our processes and to work in a standardized way throughout the Aerospace division. The second assignment is regarding control reduction of a newly introduced high volume product. The aim is to show that the process is stable enough to remove a control operation.

Yesterday the workshop period ended with a tour of the different workshops. All trainees got to show where they have been working during the workshop period and which value streams they have followed. It was extremely rewarding to share the experiences from various parts of the business and I believe that the experience gained will most likely come in handy during the rest of the trainee period.

Quality, precision and excellence. These words describe my overall impression of the business after having spent two weeks in the area where the value literally is created; in the workshops.

With previous experience within the manufacturing industry, I immediately felt at home in the manufacturing area at GKN. However, I quickly realized that my perception of what high quality really is had to be reappraised, because at GKN Aerospace, quality has been taken to new heights. At this company, quality is measured not only in hundredths of a millimeter, but in thousandths of a millimeter.

This was an eye opener for me and is definitely something that I will take with me in future assignments within the company. I just hope that this insight won’t affect my everyday life, because it’s not really time efficient to use a slide caliper to make sure that the shoe laces have exactly the same length on both sides of the knot, especially when you need to hurry for the 05:10-bus in the morning.

Hi and welcome to a new beginning of Aerobloggen!

As you may have noticed, the old cover photo has been replaced with a new one. A new group of young graduates have entered the program and will be providing new content to this blog. This time, the regular five entrants will be joined by two more from the international graduate program of GKN.

My name is Mikael, I’m the guy in the far left corner of the picture, and by my side I have Dennis and Daniel leaning over an RM 12 jet engine. Toni, Linn, Sofie and Gustav are seated in the front. If you’re curious of who is who and why, you will soon be able to read about us in the Our young graduates section (I might be in there already ;-O).

Familiar followers of the blog, or if you’ve just read the last post from Cissi, probably know how the graduate program usually take shape. We will be assigned different tasks throughout the site in Trollhättan along with study visits and activities and during the last three months leave for an internship abroad. We’re all very eager to see what is to come! We’ll keep you updated through periodic posts here in the blog. Also, stay tuned for information about the international graduate program, which we at the time of writing know little about.

After the last week’s introduction, we are currently out in the production, learning about the manufacturing of aerospace components. More of our experiences will be shared in up-coming posts.

See you soon!

Mikael and the others