Aerobloggen

One of the many perks of working for a global company is the opportunities you get to travel to other sites where you can meet with colleagues which otherwise only exist on Skype. I spent last week in El Cajon, a short drive outside San Diego in California, USA. So what did I do over there? Well, I’m doing my third rotation at the IT department where I’m a part of a green field project where we’re building a new facility for engine repairs in Malaysia.

The project team consists of people from three different continents, which makes it very difficult to find a timeslot for meetings within reasonable business hours. This is a tricky challenge from a project management perspective. It therefore requires that we meet face to face every now and then to make sure that we are aligned within the different functions. Just this kind of face-to-face meeting was the reason for my trip to Cali last week, very intense but worthwhile days!

I love to travel which was one of the big reasons why I choose a Trainee Program instead of a “normal” position. So I made sure to squeeze in some sightseeing in San Diego during my short stay. Sometimes are my aspirations a bit too ambitious… On one of the days, we had 75 minutes before dinner with the team which I considered to be plenty of time so I decided to drive to the beach village La Jolla. I looked up the current time to get there which seemed just fine but on the road I realized that the cars coming in the opposite direction didn’t move at all and that was a high way with six lanes (panic started to grew on me). Once I reached La Jolla I miraculously found a parking just at the cove so I got out of the car to snap some picture and to enjoy the view. Just a couple of minutes later I jumped back into the car to enter the traffic jam back into San Diego. Believe it or not but I arrived at to hotel with two minutes to go to dinner. Perfect timing or just good luck – that’s the question!

Talk to you soon!

Yet another adventure is over and this time we ended up in England, UK. As you most problably know by now are you as a Global Graduate working in 10 weeks periods at one position which then is rounded off with an activity week. So this week in England was the third activity week since our rotation at Engines Digital where we had a project in the US ended last Friday. Nevertheless, we managed to visit a range of cool companies during our tour in the UK.

• GKN Filton
• GKN Western Approach
• GKN Aerospace Top Management
• Airbus
• Reaction Engines
• Harewell Space Cluster med besök hos RAL Space och ESA

Our trip started off with a weekend in London where we squeezed in some sightseeing and a thrilling game of fotboll. Once the rental car was picked up, we typed in Bristol in the GPS and our eminent driver Emelie drove us safely there. The first company visit was hosted by GKN Aerostructures in Filton and David, a Swedish Global plc Graduate. He showed us around in the diffrerent factories and gave us an insight of how it is to work in the UK. We got the great oppurtunity to see the assembly of the last wing to A380 and impressing wingstructres to A350.

Tuesday made us be early birds since we had an appointment in Abingdon and Reaction Engines. We meet with their Graduates who teached us all about the company, the engine SABRE and the future of supersonic flights. They gave us a tour in the faciltites and we got to se the development lab as well as the first test site for the heatexchanger, the core technology of SABRE, super cool! Keep an eye open for Reaction Engnies and read more about there disruptive technologies: https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/.
The Tueday continued back in Bristol where we visited GKN Western Approach, a site where wing spars i composite are manufactured. It was very easy to follow the value stream since the factory was built-to-purpose which is not often the case in many other sites where a larger range of products are manufacutured under the same roof.

We spent Wednesday at Airbus where we learned more about the final assembly of wings for the mility freight aircraft A400M, simulation of fuel test and mechanical testing of wings. We also got to meet with some Graduates at Airbus, and as you might figured out by now we’re growing a network of Gradutes within all over the world which is absolutely fantastic!

Thursday offered a unique chance to meet with the Top Management of GKN Aerospace. During the day at the office in London we had intreseting and personal chats about e.g. future business models and strategies with our CEO Hans Büthker, CFO Will Hoy and Director of Global Marketing & Communications Dan Kendrick. Thank you for sharing your personal stories and tips!

We ended our week of visits with another early morning and a drive to Harewell Space Cluster, a campus which houses for 89 companies all active within space. During our visit we met with RAL Space and ESA which gave us an insight to the UK space industrie. A very intresting day which was rounded off with a history lecture at Stonehenge. The question why it was built still remains without an answer…

Thank you England and my amazing Graduate colleagues for another great week abroad! I must pinch myself sometimes to realize that I actually have the best job in the world. Now we’re all looking forward to spend the spring months on Swedish soil and our new rotations which starts the 1st of April (not an April Fool!). But first, shall we network with the space industy since Space Forum is taking place in Trollhättan and we’ll also welcome a large group of young girls which shall be introdcuded to what an engineer can do at GKN Aerospace.

Talk to you soon!

 

 

The season of career fairs is over and we just arrived from visiting Linköping University and their career fair LARM. We handed over the very pleasent job to our GKN colleages for the last career fair for this spring HotSpot in Karlstad. Besides visiting Linköping and Karlstad we’ve been attending career fairs at KTH in Stockholm, Chalmers in Gothenburg, LARV in Luleå. It has been so much fun to interact with you, and especially for me as a recent graduate and to get the chance to stand on the other side of the table and represent a company. We want to send out a big thank you to all of you who have been visiting our showcase, and we’re looking forward to see you joining us in the future. Don’t forget to seize the chance of becoming our next Global Graduates, the application closes this Sunday 17/2!
 https://bit.ly/2SKStoR

This short trip became a girls trip since it was me and my two collegues Emelie and Nina who joined. Now you’re probably wondering how we managed to split our small but yet powerfull tribe. The simple answer is that Wictor and Filip had to take another visit outside Sweden. However, we had a great couple of days in Linköping where we had scheduled a visit at Siemens Turbomachinery hosted by their graduates. We got the oppurunity to see their ultra modern AM facility and we learned about the major differeces between landborne gas turbines and airborne gas turbines, i.e. aircraft enginees. What is the big difference then? Firstly, the size but above all the requirements on part weight. It was indeed very fascinating to walk among gas turbines as big as a townhouse.

Follow GKN Aerospace Sweden on LinkedIn to stay updated on job posting and intresting news!
https://www.linkedin.com/company/gkn-aerospace-sweden-ab/

Hi there,

A new week full of possibilities has just arrived and my trainee colleagues and I kicked-off this week with an exciting visit from Volvo Cars Global Graduates. It is always as much fun to meet with other trainees from interesting companies all around Sweden to exchange experiences and to learn more about the different businesses. We did not only lecture about our cool products but we also was fortunate enough to have Peter Stommendal with us who spoke about the differences in business models within aerospace and automotive. It was an interesting take, which raised many relevant topics for discussion afterwards. Many thanks to Volvo Cars for visiting us! And we’ll see you soon but this time in Linköping where we’ll visit SAAB and together with their Global Graduates will learn more about the fighter jet JAS Gripen.

Pssst. Volvo Cars was very amused by the signs in Malöga since they still are printed in the typical Volvo font.

During the past week I’ve had French customers visiting my department within the space division. Thanks to our rich product key within both the civil and military market are no visitors allowed to walk as they wish through the plant. Consequently they need to be escorted by a GKN employee, a mission I didn’t hesitate to take on. Besides walking our visitors to the gate, their office and the dining hall am I accompanying many interesting meetings concerning the development and manufacturing of the nozzle (a very advanced exhaust pipe) to Europe’s next launcher Ariane 6. Normally I work with manufacturing engineering related to the nozzle so the given opportunity to take part of the work behind the curtains and the hardware logic is not only worthwhile for our visitors but also for me.

I am sure that many of you have heard about SpaceX, founded by the storied entrepreneur Elon Musk. He is also the founder of Tesla and a couple of other world famous high-tech companies. SpaceX’s idea is to create a reusable launcher in contrast to the current launcher programs which are scrapped after one journey into space. This brilliant idea might sound as no-brainer but the advancement in technology has always been the focus which never brought reusability into the spotlight – until now. Naturally, this puts a lot of pressure on the well-established rocket manufactures due to the fact that cost have evolved into a crucial success factor. Another important factor is the private ownership in SpaceX, both NASA and ESA are founded by governmental coalitions. This has increased the competition and driven lead times of development of new hardware to new dimensions.

But what have my French customers to do with this? During the following weeks will GKN together with our customers optimize our product so that we can launch a highly competitive rocket into space. And how cool isn’t it that Trollhättan helps putting Europe on the map when it comes to exploring space?!

A short introduction to the configuration of Ariane 6.

Time just fly by and at this moment we’ve just finshed our weeks as apprentices in the workshops all around the plant. In two weeks time has everyone of us new trainees followed certain products and their flows to get to know the company at the core. But before entering the real workshops we got a couple of intriduction days in the workshop which belongs to GKN’s secondary education and we got the oppurtunity to get some hands-on experince. We can proudly tell you that we’re now able to turn and mill by ourselves (very easy geometries, but still…).

However, I spent my first week in my workshop togheter with the operators at the differrent machnies and processing steps. And I learnt alot, but I’m far from being an expert as the guys and girls working on the floor truly are. The last week I’ve spent more time in the offices since I been working with the product manufacturing engineering team, the link between the withe collar and the bluecollar work. My collequges on the other hand have done all sorts of things since we’ve been at different workshops where different type of products are manufactured.

I’m sure of that I can speak for all of us when I say that we are starting to get ready to face the world of GKN as trainees! But before you’ll read more about our first rotations at our so called home deparments you’ll get the chance to travel with us, and where we’ll go remains unkown until we see you next time!

PS. If our beloved readers would like to get to know us new young gradautes better, there are now presentations about ourselves up on the blog.