Aerobloggen

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For me, having fun at work while having the opportunity to personal development, networking and being able to build my own career is nothing else but bull’s eye.

Six months ago I landed in Sweden with no idea what to expect from life and work here. I didn’t know who I’d be working with, what I’d be working on, or what life would be like in Trollhättan. This past six months have been filled with all sorts of amazing experiences, but now it’s my time to go back home. All good things must come to an end, and that’s true for both my time in Sweden and for my time as a GKN trainee.

Learning about Swedish culture, at work and otherwise, has been an absolute joy. One of the advantages I’ve found by being in Sweden during the winter it’s, despite the bad weather, given me insight into parts of Swedish culture that would lost on those who visit during the warmer months. This includes the julmarknad, Christmas market, where one can buy gifts for the family as well a variety of food and drinks, such as; glögg (mulled wine), sill (pickled herring, a classic), reindeer, älgkorv (moose sausages) and other tasty treats. These foods might end up on the julbord, Christmas table, the traditional spread of foods families feast on during Christmas. We were lucky enough to join with our trainee friends, current and former, to try a julbord at their St. Lucia celebration, a two-for-one Swedish tradition learning opportunity. Another small detail of Christmas time were the lights almost everyone placed in their windows, giving every town in Sweden from Malmö to Kiruna a cozy Christmastime feel.

At work, I found many cultural differences. The first, of course, was fika! Fika is the wonderful Swedish tradition of a work group coffee break with cake and/or pastries. Time on Friday afternoons comes to a stop when everyone assembles for our weekly “Fredagsfika”. This is in contrast to the American tradition of Friday donuts or bagels, where no one is taking time off, nearly the amount of time it takes to eat a donut. Sometimes an enterprising coworker, or their spouse, will make their own cake or pastry for fika. I myself made brownies and snickerdoodles to add an American dimension to a Swedish tradition. All in all, my favorite fika treat has to be the kanelbulle, the Swedish cinnamon bun. Another cultural aspect is idea of the afterwork. I had never spent time with my coworkers outside of work, so the concept of grabbing dinner or going bowling with my fellow trainees was a foreign concept to me. This is one tradition I’m hoping to bring back to the US. I really like the idea of getting to bond with coworkers in a non-work setting, I think it promotes good teamwork. The last cultural difference isn’t so much a tradition, but more of activity. With a gymnasium on site, coworkers will gather three days a week to play innebandy (floor hockey). I joined nearly every time I could, and will tell you that despite being a technically non-competitive game, things get intense! I’m almost 100% positive this type of thing would never happen in the US, with coworkers getting injuries like twisted ankles relatively often, or using body defense against your boss.

Before this post gets too long, I want to summarize the places I’ve been to and the things I’ve seen. Over the past 6 months I’ve been to Gothenburg a fair share of times, Stockholm three times, Kiruna in Northern Sweden twice, Copenhagen, Oslo, and a whole slew of countries and cities on our Eurotrip. I’ve visited the SSC, OHB, GKN Fokker Aerostructures, ESA, GKN driveline in Paris and Safran on study visits. My sister and later some of my friends from home came to Sweden and allowed me to show them this amazing country. In short, it’s been an action packed and eventful six months. Six months I’ll remember for the rest of life.

Lastly, a small list of things that annoyed me about Sweden, because no where’s perfect. Number one, the prices. Good lord, living in Sweden is expensive. How does everyone dress so nicely and feed themselves at the same time? Is 80% of your income spent on food and clothes? Number two, speaking of dressing nicely, Swedes are too good looking. No one wants to feel unattractive for 6 months straight. Sometimes I seriously feel like the worst dressed person in this whole country. Lastly, topics of discussion. Yes, there are in fact things to talk about besides the weather and the “new” coffee machines they put in two months ago.

All that’s behind me now, for in a few short days I make my return to San Diego. Soon I’ll step off the plane into the warm Californian sun, and step forward into the next chapter of my career here at GKN.

Nick

We had the pleasure of meeting Didunoluwa Obilanade, a graduate from GKN Aerospace in Filton! He works with AM and has been in Sweden for a classified project. We will actually meet him again in a few weeks when we’re going to England.

I think Didunoluwa thought it was nice to meet us too, he wrote this on Yammer:

“Back in Filton AMC after a great week learning from the Prometheus Engine team in Trollhättan. Whilst I was in Sweden I arranged to meet with the GKN Trollhättan Trainees, my Swedish counterparts. They hosted me with some delightful ‘Fika’ as we discussed the range of project work that we’ve been doing during our graduate schemes, how they differ and the importance of taking time like this to network and learn about the activities of our sites. In fact two of the trainees are currently on the American GKN graduate program, doing their international placement in Sweden, hence this was a very global graduate networking session. The Trollhättan trainees will be visiting the UK sites in March and I’m much looking forward to hosting them during their visit to the GKN Bristol sites.”

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Last week ended with a happy mood and big smile for us trainees! Four of us trainees – Signe, Maria, Emma and myself – together with Magnus Hallberg attended last Friday the TraineeDay event in Gothenburg to represent GKN Aerospace Sweden.

What type of event is TraineeDay? The purpose of TraineeDay is to give students and young professionals all across Sweden the opportunity to gather and meet company representatives with the leading Graduate Programmes in Sweden (hint hint). During the entire day we mingled with very engaged and interested people who wanted to know more about the GKN business, where we got the pleasure to share more about is at GKN and our Graduate Programme and what it entails. To share our experiences within the programme, describing what type of challenging, fun and interesting tasks and events we have been involved with.

During the afternoon, Emma and I also held a company presentation/seminar to share more information about GKN, the industry, our Graduate Programme. Additionally, we also held a Guesstimations workshop, that was really fun for all of us involved. For those of you who has never heard of Guesstimations – the challenge is to find a reasonable answer to a question, based on sensible thought processes and personal knowledge. An example;

How long does it take for JAS 39 Gripen to travel between Gothenburg – Stockholm?

• Most of us know that the distance is around 400 km.
• Reasonable guess to max. velocity at around Mach 2 – 2500 km/h.
• From proportions – it should be less than 1/6 of an hour – less than 10 minutes!
• (Use the same question with Ariane 5 rocket and 25 000 km/h – less than a minute!)

Answers definitely varies depending on personal assumptions and time given, but the entire workshop was really appreciated and we had a lot of fun together.

The entire day was very exciting, filled with mingle and happy faces, along with a very successful seminar with a lot of questions and laughter. TraineeDay was really good and definitely something I could be a part of once again, 5/5 toasters!

/Philip

We graduates have now landed back at the office again after an amazing Sweden tour! This Monday we once again took a seat in our dear van to visit interesting companies such as SAAB, ABB and GKN Driveline.

We were very excited prior the meeting with SAAB since we would be given the opportunity to see the final assembly of JAS Gripen, our Swedish fighter which we in Trollhättan have designed and manufactured several versions of its engine. SAAB’s current graduates greeted us; it was of course nice to hear more about SAAB as a company as well as how their graduate scheme is like. It was fascinating to see the final assembly of JAS Gripen. To be standing under a fighter does not count as ordinary and we was able to see the talented fitters who assembled by hand (!). We ended the visit with a pleasant dinner together with all the graduates.

Once in Linköping we with took the opportunity to work at LARM (Linköping university work fair), thereof the “waitress” outfit, and visit the Air force museum.

On the road again to ABB in Västerås and their Graduates. They are a whopping 16 people who kindly organized everything from a dinner, to a company presentation by Dennis Helfridsson (Vice President ABB Robotics Sweden), a tour through the robot factory and inspiring activities in their robotics lab.

The Sweden tour was finished off with a visit at our sister company GKN Driveline in Köping. An impressive visit led by Peter Sköld (SCIL Leader) where we had change to see the differences between the two businesses. A high degree of automation, which is explainable since they manufacture millions of components in a year. The pace is not as high in Trollhättan…

To conclude, an amazing trip with various types of visits and an opportunity to create good relations with other graduates and leading figures within the companies. Cannot wait until next trip!

/Lisa

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear beloved blog reader!

In these times of love, I send you a warm and hearty greeting from Holland. I know you have all been wondering how I, Joel and Joakim are doing here. Unfortunately, I cannot speak on behalf of my dear friends, but they indeed seem to be on top of the world when we meet every now and then down here. Anyhow, here’s a long-awaited guest blog post from me!

Since the end of October / November, I am located in southern Holland, just outside the country’s second largest city Rotterdam. More precisely, I live in Dordrecht, which is actually the oldest city in Holland and accordingly very cozy. Right in the middle of the old charming neighborhoods, I live in an astonishingly nice apartment. So nice, that during the Christmas holidays I even went back here in time to throw an epic new year´s celebration together with Joel, Jocke, David, Neil and a crew of other friends we´ve got to know down here.

Every morning I do a five minute walk through the beautiful city center and then take the ferry across the river to Fokker Aerostructures in Papendrecht. This site constitutes the headquarters of the Fokker division and in the near future also for the entire GKN Aerostructures. Here I am involved in two projects that both concerns the production of fuselage panels for a new business jet. In one of the projects, we are developing an industrial infrastructure to handle the large metal sheets that are then assembled to the complete aircraft. With sheets over 5m in length, only 0.4mm thick and furthermore with a large amount of holes and perforations, you understand that it is clearly a challenge to lift and transport these fragile products. My role is project support, which means that I am responsible for planning and follow-up on the project, as well as ensuring that all deliverables are covered by the respective sub-projects. It is an interesting work and a very valuable experience for future project manager assignments. The second project is the manufacturing of the very first shipset of the above-mentioned panels, and in this work I am responsible for the daily planning of a segment of the production. A very much challenging task with virtually daily changing conditions arising from customer needs and internal production!

All in all, I am very pleased with life in Holland and I have met many nice people and spent some fun weekends with my Swedish colleagues. Now I also finally start feeling that spring is in the air, and since I will stay here all the way until the end of April, I’m sure that I have many wonderful excursions and adventures to come where I can discover even more of what this country has to offer!

On Monday it was once again time for some cultural exchange with our American graduates and this time Super Bowl was in focus. To not ruin our beauty sleep when the game was aired on Sunday night we saw it on Monday at Nick’s place instead. It was a chill evening with food, drinks and top class company. Maybe it was good that Philadelphia Eagles won the game since Nick would probably have thrown us out otherwise 😀 

GKN was this week part of the work fair CHARM which is held at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. Next week on Tuesday are we going to be part of Linköping University’s equivalent, LARM. Come by and say hi if you are in the neighborhood! We will also visit GKN Driveline in Köping and the graduates at ABB and SAAB, but more on that next week.

Now it’s time to go out to the machines and listen to the Friday song!
Have a good weekend!
/Maria

Best blog readers,

This will most likely be my second last blog post in Trollhättan and now you are probably wondering where I’m going next but I will not tell you about that yet. So keep visiting the blog 😊

One of the benefits with being a graduate engineer is to meet with managers all over the organization. Personally, this is something I really enjoy and I think the rest of the graduate group agrees with me. You learn a lot about the organization and what each department is working with as well as seeing very different types of personalities. This is something I find very interesting and after reading the book “Surrounded by idiots” (I’m recommending everyone to read it!) it becomes even more clear how different everyone is.

/Signe

For more than 250 years, the fundamental drivers behind economic growth been technological innovations. The most essential ones have been innovations which economics referred to as general technologies, a category of inventions which includes the steam engine, electricity, internet and the combustion engine.

Each general technology has induced a wave of complementary innovations and possibilities. For example, the combustion engine have given rise to cars, trucks, airplanes, chainsaws and lawnmowers. These have in return enabled shopping centers, supply chains and even suburbs. Many claim that the most vital general technology today is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and in particular Machine Learning (ML), which is the ability of a machine to learn patterns based on large quantities of data.  

But why is this so important? Every day we perform tasks where existing patterns are too hard for the human intellect to discover. ML-systems are very good at finding these patterns and present correlations we have never seen before. Most often these algorithms achieve “superhuman performance”, which in short means that the algorithm’s performance outstand humans ability. 

GKN are actively working with implementation of Machine Learning in large parts of our organization. My focus right now is on AI initiatives within production, but initiatives has also started within our product development.