Aerobloggen

Hi there dear blog aficionados!

Now in the early morning as I am sitting on my commute from Gothenburg to Trollhättan, I am in a reflective mood, and with a smile on my face thinking back on the previous week. Of what one might wonder? Well, it certainly included intermingling, laughter and lots of pizza – in other words, the Inspiration Night!

Last Tuesday, 23^rd Jan, we young graduates arranged for an Inspiration Night for the local ITU-programme (High School programme of Industry & Technology). Over 30 interested pupils and parents joined us at this event, where they got the opportunity to ask questions, learn more about the GKN enterprise in Trollhättan and simultaneously get to know what opportunities and what the ITU-programme offer.

The evening started with an inspiring (of course) presentation held by our graduate Lisa, on education in general and within technical fields specifically, as well as sharing insights into the operations and enterprise of GKN – what we do and why that is important. Two outstanding teachers from GKN were also present – Magnus Ek and Per Ingemansson. They described the ITU-programme, shared interesting statistics, answered interesting questions and also presented what opportunities there are before, during and after ITU. Jonas Velander, a former student, was also present at the event and shared his colorful experience of the programme, which has led him to his interests and work today involving the RM12 jet engine for JAS Gripen.

Something that actually caught my attention, which I appreciate, is the flexibility in choice that ITU offers with both qualifying towards higher education as well as providing good practical hands-on experience during the time that you’re studying.

The evening was concluded with some fun intermingling and lots of pizza! It was nice to be able to speak with both parents and students, discuss education and listen to their thoughts and opinions in the matter – and gobbling substantial amounts of pizza while doing so!

We graduates are definitely repeating this event due to the positive response of the evening. Onwards, we are planning to also invite all pupil classes in secondary schools that wishes to join, and ignite even more interest for technology and spread the inspiration!

Until then,

Mr. P signing out!

Andreas, what do you think is the most important thing for a company? For a quality engineer, the answer is easy: the customer! In order to proclaim my love for the customer, I have composed a letter that shows my appreciation. (An owner usually thinks that return on equity or another boring figure is more important. But who would want to write a love letter to return on equity?).

Dear Customer,

We love you. We could not live without you. We do not know what we would do without you. You are the reason we exist. Our entire business aims to give you what you want. We start where you have a need and do not end until you are satisfied. All we want to do is to create value for you. We think of you every day, we worry about you and wonder how we can help you. We base our whole self-esteem on what you think about us. Please, love us back. Occasionally, we make mistakes which may disappoint you, but do not lose faith in us. We will reward you many times over if you trust us and give us the chance to perform. Please give us a second chance.

I would like to end with a quote from someone wise.

“[The customer] is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

Customer, we love you.

Forever yours,
A secret admirer

Hello again blog lovers,

I have now left my project at the Quality department for a new project within Production. It’s so fun to gear up with steel hood shoes and safety glasses and to hang out with some machines! For the next 10ish weeks I’m going to run a project within Statistical Process Control (SPC) in one of our workshops. At Chalmers I did a Black Belt Lean Six Sigma training which reminds me, methodically, a lot of what I’m doing right now. It’s fun to see a real applicable connection between what I’ve learned at university and my actual job 😛

Besides the work I’m doing at my new department we graduates are in the middle of planning the spring with everything from company visits, internal meetings with managers to work fairs. A real mix of assignments!

Don’t forget to apply to the Graduate Program 🙂

Click here to apply to a Engineering position

Click here to apply to a Economist position

Dear blog readers.

Do you also want to be part of the exciting graduate program you’ve read about this last fall and winter? The applications for one of Sweden’s oldest, well reputed and prestigious graduate programs are now open.

As you’ve earlier read on this blog, GKN Aerospace Graduate Program offers an individual and special career path within an internationally respected company. The program lasts for 18 months starting in September 2018 where the first 12 months are performed at the Trollhättan site and the last 6 month somewhere else in the world. The time in Sweden is divided into 4-6 rotations within different departments of the company.

The graduates makes study visits, have their own “Graduate project” and attends various leadership courses. The last six months are sited somewhere abroad, at any of our own sites, suppliers or partners. The program requires strong motivation for the participants to plan and implement all activities themselves, while providing each graduate with a great opportunity to shape their future within the company. For more information about our activities, education and individual work, please read previous blog posts

As an applicant, you are:

• Determined to one day have a key position within your area
• Recently graduated from a masters program in mechanical engineering, engineering physics, industrial engineering or equivalent .
• Recently graduated with a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Economics, Finance or related majors.
• Interested to work with product or production development, technology, purchasing, logistics or quality.
• Fluent in Swedish and English.

Please apply to GKN Aerospace Graduate Program 2018 here. Good luck!

Click here to apply to a Engineering position

Click here to apply to a Economist position

As you have read in previous blog posts we graduates had the opportunity to visit interesting companies around Europe before going on Christmas holidays. We have travelled countless miles together in our mini-van, closer to 4000 km (!), where our second stop was in Papendrecht, Netherlands.

Of course, we wanted to take the opportunity to visit Fokker Aerostructures which have been a part of GKN Aerospace since 2015. We were met by Leo Mujis, Senior Manufacturing Engineer and general go-to-guy, who has a long and impressive experience within Fokker. He told about the company and its history and showed us around the production area. Fokker are leaders in manufacturing of empennages for business jets which we also got to see, impressive!

 Not to forget, Kasper and Signe also held a presentation about GKN Aerospace Sweden! Fokker wanted to hear about Engine Systems and what we do, which we more than happily did! They made a poster prior to our visit, look how dashing ;). We also got to meet Tim Jansen, Senior Engineer Specialist Stress, who very kindly had organized for the presentation. Around 30 engineers participated and asked a lot of curious questions. It was very much appreciated to meet colleagues from Fokker we must say!

During this time, Netherlands got an unexpected winter and raised a red alert, which unfortunately meant that we could not meet our graduate colleague Andreas Åhwall, who works at Fokker in Papendrecht at the moment, since he was stuck elsewhere due to a cancelled flight. We had all looked forward to be his guests, but instead had to rent a small holiday house close by. Despite all, fun adventures!

/Lisa

Hi again,

I have just returned to the office after Christmas, which I spent in my dear Norrland together with family and friends. Especially the snow was something I had longed for, since Trollhättan is a bit short of that product. Now I am at home, rested and excited for a new trainee rotation! Before I get started though, I will update you about our last activity week, and more particularly, the visit to Safran.

Visit to Safran

This was our last study visit for the week. The previous study visits during the week had been good, but the visit to Safran still met my expectations with a great deal! We had a packed day with schedule from 9-16 plus transportation around. We visited Safran’s site in Villeroche, which was amazing. Villeroche is quite close to Paris and by car it takes no more than about an hour. We like to think that our site in Trollhättan is quite large with our more than 2,000 employees and 3 major workshops, but it was nothing compared to Safran. Safran had about 5000 employees working on everything from the assembly of jet engines to customer relations with among others, Airbus.

As if that was not enough, Safran also had a large museum where the day’s tour started. The museum was run by retired employees from Safran who worked as volunteers with renovating engines and taking care of guided tours. We also happened to be lucky that the one who guided us was none other than the former CEO of the CFM56 engine, who had many exciting stories to tell about both his own career and the aerospace industry overall.

As mentioned before, the museum was very large and featured elements from the history of the entire aerospace industry, since Wright brothers flew their aircraft in 1903, to 2000 where Safran is working with their successful LEAP and CFM56 engines.

After the museum visit, we met one of Safran’s commercial managers who had a full overview of Safran’s final assembly line, which we soon would get the opportunity to see in real life. He explained how they work with AR (Augmented reality) and effective assembly lines to cope with future production and high demands from customers. After the presentation and chat, we finally got to see the final assembly line where the big engines were assembled. There were different assembly processes for different engines which was exciting to see. What I was most impressed with was that it was so quiet, efficient and modern. I had expected a lot of noise and a bit of outdated industrial facilities, but Safran was quite the opposite, which was fun to see!

In the evening we all went out for a nice dinner together at Notre Dame. We tried escargots, foie gras and other French specialties which was delicious. After that, we went to the Eiffel Tower to do some nightly sightseeing. During the activity weeks, we work and learn more about the aerospace industry, so if you want to do some sightseeing in the cities you travel to, you sometimes get to do it at odd times. We entered the Eiffel Tower exactly two minutes before they closed the entrance and saw the whole tower lit in the dark night. It was a nice end to the day and our second activity week!

That was all for now!

/Emma