Aerobloggen

Last week we received the good news that our proposal of the graduate project got approved by HR. This was instantly celebrated with a super delicious apple pie from the lunch restaurant, which also gave us the positive energy we needed to start with the project right away. The purpose of this project is to increase the awareness of GKN Aerospace Sweden (GAS) as an employer among students and young people throughout Sweden but also strengthen the brand awareness of GAS.  

This will be done in two different ways. The first one is focusing on the improvement of our participation at career fairs and upgrading the booth. Tasks such as concept development, order a new booth, refine our brochures and look into new giveaways will definitely be included.

The second part of our project is aimed at modernizing the visitor centre here on site, whereas the goal is to make it more compelling to the visitors and deliver a new concept for how it can look like. We have already a lot of creative thoughts and ideas around this topic, but it will be more fun to reveal them later when things are fallen into the place.

The last week it has been full focus on the tasks we have at our departments, especially for me and Elin. We have been busy carrying out internal audits for the Intermediate Compressor Case that we manufacture for Rolls Royce’s Trent XWB engine. An internal audit implies that you go through each operation step in detail and tries to find areas of improvement with the help of the operators’ inputs. As a result, we have spent most of the week out in the workshop and gained a deeper understanding for TIG, plasma and LASER welding, which was super cool and interesting!

As most people say, time flies when you are having fun, it is also about time to start planning for our next rotation and I will reveal mine in the coming weeks. Beside that we will soon begin with our graduate project, which we will tell you more about soon.

We have finally arrived in the land of freedom and started our second activity week, which is in California. The first few days were spent around Los Angeles, where we took the Monday to visit one of our sites in Santa Ana, roughly an hour by car from downtown LA. We were greeted by the site HR manager, Leslie Gelle, who took us on an educational tour of their facilities and workshops. The GKN Aerospace Santa Ana site manufactures honeycomb panel structures. In principle, these are made of two thin metal sheets with a grid in between, which resembles a honey comb. The result works a bit like a thermos, and minimizes transfer of heat and noise to the surroundings.

The parts that are made using honey comb plates are predominantly located in the rear part of the engine. Besides the tour, we met site manager Scott Gulyas for an interesting discussion about the future development of the site. We also took the chance to catch up with one of our fellow Global Graduate colleagues, Honi Ahmadian-Tehrani.