Aerobloggen

The time had come to leave the West Coast and to meet the rest of our Global Graduates in Charleston, South Carolina. It was great fun to get back together with our friends that we last met in September. Now it was time to start Training week 1 with workshops in self-awareness, personal image and communication skills. As expected, the workshops were both fun and useful, for example we got to work on our presentation skills using the ABCD framework (Google it!).

During the Wednesday we had a study visit at the GKN plant in Orangeburg, about an hour outside Charleston. There we got an introduction in the technologies they work with and the products they produce. This was the fourth facility we’ve visited as Global Graduates but the first on the Aerostructures side of the business, which is the largest product group. It was cool to see how lip skins (the front “edge” of the engine, very important for aerodynamic performance!) are formed, for example to be used in the newly developed GE9X engine. GE9X won the Guinness World Record for strongest commercial jet engine, showing the ability to produce nearly 600kN of thrust – enough to lift a weight of 61 tons! This engine will be used for the new Boeing 777x, which recently had its maiden flight.

In addition to this, we had a course in Zero Defects, which is an important tool being deployed throughout the aerospace industry right now. Zero Defects is a work standard aimed at the reduction of defects in products through prevention. In the aerospace industry, we have extremely high requirements of product quality – after all, nobody wants to put people’s lives at risk by using damaged or defective goods. Therefore, it is important that everyone in the industry works together to create safe products.

This was everything from our USA trip,

Thank you for reading and see you soon!