Last week I had the honor to educate my dear colleagues in the hot topic of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The course was offered for colleagues from all departments during the internal educations weeks called “Training Days”. The purpose of Training days is for people around the company to share their knowledge and inspire others.
In the two hour lecture I defined artificial intelligence and discussed how these technologies could be used within the company. Several buzzwords such as big data, machine learning, deep learning, etc was clarified and examples on how machine learning could be used to solve various tasks was presented. I want to thank everyone for the warm feedback I’ve been given. I’m very happy for all the initiatives that has started as a consequence of the course.
This upcoming summer I plan to host a couple of longer courses where participants will have the opportunity to program their own machine learning algorithms.
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.
Applications for this years graduate program is finally open!
Do you also want to be part of the exciting graduate program you’ve read about this last fall and winter? The applications for one of Sweden’s oldest, well reputed and prestigious graduate programs are now open.
As you’ve earlier read on this blog, GKN Aerospace Graduate Program offers an individual and special career path within an internationally respected company. The program lasts for 18 months starting in September 2018 where the first 12 months are performed at the Trollhättan site and the last 6 month somewhere else in the world. The time in Sweden is divided into 4-6 rotations within different departments of the company.
The graduates makes study visits, have their own “Graduate project” and attends various leadership courses. The last six months are sited somewhere abroad, at any of our own sites, suppliers or partners. The program requires strong motivation for the participants to plan and implement all activities themselves, while providing each graduate with a great opportunity to shape their future within the company. For more information about our activities, education and individual work, please read previous blog posts
As an applicant, you are:
Determined to one day have a key position within your area
Recently graduated from a masters program in mechanical engineering, engineering physics, industrial engineering or equivalent .
Recently graduated with a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Economics, Finance or related majors.
Interested to work with product or production development, technology, purchasing, logistics or quality.
Fluent in Swedish and English.
Please apply to GKN Aerospace Graduate Program 2018 here. Good luck!
Half of the time at my home department Rotors have passed. At this department, GKN develops turbines for Europe’s rocket program Ariane. Apart from constantly delivering components for Europes current rocket program Ariane 5, my department develops and prepares components for the upcoming Ariane 6, with first launch planed 2020, and the project PROMETHEUS, as described below. Since I false started my time at GKN in June already, I had already been at this department for a few months when I started the graduate program.
Earlier this summer I was involved in a pre-study within the PROMETHEUS-project. This French owned and newly started project has the goal to develop a methane driven rocket. Like all other space related projects, the PROMETHEUS project has a forced abbreviation that sounds ”Precursor Reusable Oxygen METHan cost Effective engine”. You keep wonder, what happened to the ”U” and the ”S”? My part of the project involved investigating initial design concepts and estimate how reasonable our customers technical requirements are. Very exciting task!
After the initial training weeks of the graduate program, I returned to my home department and started working within the Vinci-project. Within the Vinci-project GKN is responsible for both design and production for both turbines in Ariane 6’s first and second stage engines called Vulcain 2.1 and Vinci. The turbines provides power to drive the engine’s two fuel pumps, used for devlivering high pressurized fuel to the engines combustion chamber. Unlike the PROMETHEUS-project, Vinci is in a qualification phase where we as turbine providers must show that our product fulfils the engines technical specification. The qualification phase involves tight collaboration between production, testing engineers and CAE-analysts. My role within the project deals with prediction of turbine performance as a function of production deviations. Interesting!
PS. How do you organize a space party? You planet!
Time to lose my virginity as a blog writer. As earlier years, the fourth week was an so called Activity Week. During the graduate program, we are suppose to visit different companies around Europe in order to strengthen our relations and get broader perspectives both inside and outside the aerospace industry. In the last couple of years, the graduates have visited everything from Airbus headquarters in Toulouse toTetra Pak (multinational food packaging company) in southern Sweden.
This years first trip was divided into two parts where Monday – Wednesday was spent on company visits in Stockholm and Thursday – Friday was spent on leadership training in the province of Bohuslän. Ouside all professional acitivies, the week offered a wide range of private activities such as a picknick at Ingarö in the Stockholm archipelago. Excellent week to get to know each other!
Private activity in the Stockholm archipelago.
SSC Swedish Space Corporation Our first visit of the week was the former “Rymdaktiebolaget” that fairly recently rebranded itself to SSC Swedish Space Corporation, in order to enhance their international relations. SSC is a government owned corporation, originally intended for space related research and maintenance of the Swedish space station on the outskirts of Kiruna, northern Sweden. The company mainly develops and produces different kind of space technology such as science experiment equipment for micro gravity. The research is carried out using sounding rockets, mainly due to the low price and high reliability they offer. Outside the science part of the space station Esrange, the station is one of the most active civil ground stations in the world. The reason is Esranges beneficial geographical position, above the arctic circle, which provides them with exceptional conditions for regular data transfer from both science equipped satellites as well as earth observation satellites.
Visit to SSC headquarters in Solna.
SSC have recently extended their customer portfolio, outside Swedish National Space Board and ESA, to also include several international private actors. During the visit we met with Alf Vaerneus (Technical project manager, System Engineer) at SSC headquarters in Solna. Besides an splendid business presentation, Alf showed us parts of the company’s production and a case study of the Maxus 9 project. The first film below shows a shorter presentation of the project. The second video is a 360°-video of a Maxus 9 launch.
OBH Sweden AB After the visit to SSC we continued towards OHB Sweden AB, which is another space oriented company, previously a part of SSC. The company produces satellite systems for various space craft with both governmental and private actors. Unlike SSC, OHB has a focus on space systems in orbit, both LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and GEO (Geostationary orbit). This includes satellites for data collection in everything from metrology to positioning systems such as GPS and Gelileo. During our stay we met Nils Pokrupa (Head of Spacecraft dept.), Desireé Brundin (Spacecraft Engineer) and Erik Clacey (Spacecraft Engineer) who gave a solid business presentation and showed us their production, clean rooms and mission control centers. Very exciting!
Visit to OHB Sweden AB
GKN Aerospace Governmental Relations Office The last visit during our stay in Stockholm was spent at GKN’s office for Governmental relations, right next to the Swedish parliament. The small office, with only two employees, has the purpose of maintaining good political relations with the Swedish government and keep all affected politicians well informed. During the visit we met with Hannes Borg and Stefan Hjort that together deals with these kind of questions. For the moment they were working intensly on the smoking hot question of what country and company that will get the engine maintenance contract on the upcoming JAS 39E Gripen. It was very interesting to meet with people who work with these unusual questions.
Bohusgården The last days of the trip was dedicated for leadership training at Bohusgården outside Uddevall on the west coast of Sweden. Besides various well beinig activities, all graduates had to take part of the traditional “Graduate- baptism” in a eleven degrees Celcius cold Kattegatt. At least the weather was with us!
The traditional “graduate-baptism” at Bohusgården.
