Aerobloggen

After the two intense days of leadership training, personal development and deep dives into our innermost beings which David referred to in the previous post (and which by the way were held at the very enjoyable Bohusgården in Uddevalla), it was at the previous Saturday time for us to steer our big black van towards a far more far-reaching journey. This time we had our sights on an epic road trip stretching 4000km throughout large parts of Europe!

As you might already know, between our ten weeks work placements we trainees have so called activity weeks when we, apart from leadership and group development, spend our time building networks and increasing our competence by the means of visiting fellow companies within the aerospace industry. During this second activity week, as mentioned half of Europe lay at our feet and the first target was set at Fokker Services in Hoogerheide south of Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Because we had quite a few kilometers to cover, and since we were eager to enjoy everything the continent had to offer us, we started our journey early in the Saturday morning. After some pleasant hours of socializing and music listening, we arrived Bremen at dusk and had a nice dinner before settling for the night. At Sunday, we crossed the Dutch border, drove the last few hours into Amsterdam and even took us some time to fill the yearly cultural prescription by visiting the van Gogh Museum, after which is was time to prepare ourselves for a work week beyond the usual.A whole years prescription of cultural experiences filled in only a few intense hours.The well known Fokker logo and a propeller pwered Fokker 50 in Dutch KLM service.

The Dutch Fokker makes up a classic name in the history of aerospace business. The company was founded already in 1912 and has during the years of operation produced both military and civil aircrafts. Among the most recognized models, the propeller powered Fokker 50 and the jet powered Fokker 100 are to be found. Both these airliners have served as so called regional jets or city hoppers since the middle 80´s. Fokker delivered its last complete airplane in 1996 and since then the business focus is on the production of electric wiring systems and landing gears, along with the complete overhaul and service of both airplane structures and jet engines. In October 2015 GKN plc. acquired Fokker and since then it’s a part of our very own GKN Aerospace.

At the site in Hoogerheide complete overhauls of the full aircrafts are performed and the facilities have their own landing runway to be able to welcome the planes arriving for service. We trainees didn´t knew exactly which expectations to place on our visit at the site and we were happily surprised when we almost immediately nearly clashed with three big airliners already in the first of many hangars. As we in our daily work focus our attention on isolated parts of the engines, it was very much welcomed to see these parts in their bigger context, both in the form of close encounters with the mounted engines and as part of the entire airplanes on display. We were also given the chance to live out our pilot dreams when we entered a cockpit, and we experienced how an airplane cabin feels even narrower when all the seats have been removed. To state it short, the day at Fokker was nothing else but a great success!

Happy and keen to gain even more experiences we returned to Amsterdam in the evening to enjoy a cozy canal boat tour, while at the same time pumping our minds for the next engaging day to come!Beautiful installations at the Amsterdam Lights Festival.

High quality standards, inducing an equally high safety, for manufactured parts is a self-evident aspect of the aerospace business. Just as essential is the safety for all employees within the company!

To raise an awareness of all conceivable risks, and to find which actions that should be taken to eliminate or mitigate these, GKN plc. uses a concept known as thinkSAFE!. This concept comprises everything from machinery in motion and how to perform heavy lifts safely, via chemical-, energy- and environment policies to ergonomics and social wellbeing. The information is spread on message boards and posters within the workshops as well as the offices, by e-brochures and educational videos and directly at unit meetings. Ultimately, the goal is to establish a behavior which leads us on the way to the vision of zero incidents at our workplace. Within the concept of thinkSAFE! there is a sub concept named don´t WALK BY! which encourages all co-workers to report so called near misses, which is an unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness or damage but had the potential to do so. Capturing these near misses is very important in order to take actions to proactively prevent injuries, which also is emphasized by a pay bonus given if a certain number of risks are reported at our site during this year.

Another important instrument to raise the safety awareness within the company are the many internal courses that we employees are educated by. As an example, it is a formal requirement for all staff working within production to, among many other courses, attend sessions in Safe machine stops and Safe heavy lifts. As I study to become a certified manufacturing engineer these courses are mandatory for me as well. Last week I took part in the Safe machine stops and next week I will attend Safe heavy lifts, which includes a practical section where we get to maneuver powered pallet trucks and stackers. Let´s just hope that I´ve got an at least slightly better safety awareness than poor Klaus does in this quite laughable German education movie!

During the current week Taining Days have been an ongoing event for many of the technical departments at GKN Aerospace in Trollhättan. Training Days is a biannual event at which the employees get a chance to learn more about subjects which they perhaps don´t work with on a daily basis. The lectures have teached us about everything from our current strategies and ongoing research and development projects, thru negotiation techniques, lean strategies and Excel commands to employee involvement and mental stress reduction. Most of the educators have been local experts working at GKN here in Trollhättan, but guest lecturers from Volvo Trucks and our Dutch sister company Fokker have also visited us to share their knowledge and experiences.

As recently recruited graduate engineers we are especially encouraged to participate in the courses and learn as much as possible. Personally, I most of all appreciated the inspiring lecture in negotiation skills which gave us valuable instruments for coming negotiations with suppliers and customers regarding contracts and technical requirements. Even better, these strategies are equally useful at a personal level in debates with parents, partners and future children!

To be given the opportunity to participate in all the stimulating educations which GKN offer, also outside Training Days, is a privilege that proves that the company truly invests in our growth on both a professional and personal level!

It´s now time for the next member of the graduate group to write his first blog post. If you would like to know more about me and why I now find myself here at GKN Aerospace there is more to read under the Our young graduates-tab.

In contrast to the previous blogger David and the rest of my fellow young graduates, I have not spent the last two weeks on the shop floor. Because I’ve already, before my university studies, been working a year with the service of jet engines, I instead get the opportunity to start ahead of time at my home department.

My placement is at the manufacturing engineering within the civil markets. This department mainly consists of product engineers and project managers. To state it shortly, everything we do aims at achieving a high quality production with the best possible efficiency. As an example my department develops new production concepts and investigates which equipment that needs to be obtained when a new product is put into production. Close collaboration with our suppliers regarding quality and technical specifications is also a continuously ongoing project. Another very important part in our commitment is process monitoring, in order to ensure the best possible quality.

One very interesting technical tool that I´ve been working with during my first two weeks is inspection with the help of 3D-scanning. This means that the actual part is scanned and modelled in all three dimension with very good accuracy (down to one thousand of a millimeter!). The created virtual model is then compared with the corresponding CAD-model to ensure the supreme product quality. A very fascinating technique to say the least, which you can learn more about in the short video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtMQA41Vlhs

The first weeks at GKN Aerospace have been very exciting and I´ve already learned a lot. I now look forward to encounter much more technics during my coming weeks at my home department. First though, a so called activity week awaits us young graduates during which we, among many other things, will visit other companies in the aerospace business. Read more about these adventures in the upcoming posts!