It’s been a while since we trainees wrote
anything here. What has affected this is not so
surprisingly the current situation and that GKN, as well as many other
companies in Sweden, are on furlough for a couple of months. But how is it
really to work during furlough?
Of course it depends
from person to person but for me it has caused some readjustments. Going from
full work weeks to 60% (three days a week) was a strange feeling at first,
because what are you supposed to do during the days off, especially when you
are supposed to avoid public places as much as possible? You can notice that
the slightly older ones have an easier time finding activities to do, fixing
their house, spending more time with their families etc.
This will not
turn into a LinkedIn post with a carpe diem theme with seems to be popular
nowadays, but something I have found very fulfilling has been online courses, a
couple of hours a day. Attending those gives me a feeling that I do something
productive during my longer “weekends”. But that´s what works for me, there are
an abundance of activities you can pursue, it´s all about finding something
that gives you more value.
Lastly, ending
with some good news! We´ve got the news that if the Covid situation have calmed
down a bit we will be going to Bristol this September, to have a development
week (like the one we had in the US) and meet all the other global grads!
What a week! Something
you´ve probably noticed with so many blogposts during a short time-span.
Although we haven’t had the time to describe all activities so thought it could
be good with a little summary of the week.
This Monday we went to
Finspång, small city outside Linköping to visit Siemens and their graduates.
They visited us last autumn so this time it was out turn to learn more about
their organization.
We got to see final
assembly of their gas turbines and also a so called “single lift”, which is a
fully assembled gas turbine with control room and much more. It is the heaviest
product Siemens have delivered for several years and weighed over 250 tons, so
was really exciting to witness! We also got insights regarding their push
within AM (additive manufacturing) which gave us a lot of inspiration to bring
back!
Fun fact regarding the
manufacturing in Finspång is that a castle was included in the purchase of the
production plant in the 1800s, which means that the castle has followed all
companies that have taken over the production area since then. Siemens officially
took over 2003 and the castle is today their visitor center as you can see in
our magnificent photo below.
Big thanks for a
really interesting afternoon!
Ps. The cannons located around the castle are there for historical reasons, the land was first used for manufacturing cannons before gas turbines started to be produced.
Trainee-crew outside Siemens visitor center
On Tuesday it was time
for the LARM career fair, almost all graduates where there (Hampus was at
Futurum) and advertised GKN and the Global Graduate Program. It was especially for
us to partake when so many interested and curios students came by!
During Tuesday and Wednesday
it was also the last days at Futurum, I have already written a bit about that
last week but have been really rewarding days. Both through inspiring high
school students and the possibility to improve our presentation skills.
Lastly, we spent Thursday and Friday at “space days” at Universeum in Gothenburg, where we had our VR system and let the visitors try it out, which you can see in the picture below!
Looking ahead it seems
that the graduate activities will slow down a bit which will be quite nice.
Been some fun and rewarding weeks but will be good to be able to put 100%
effort on our rotations!
Are you also interested in the aviation and space industry? Are you up for exciting and challenging projects? Do you want to be a part of a team that makes things fly? Do you want to learn more about us? Drop by our booth and we´ll tell you more about us!
PS: Only 6 days left of the application period so don’t forget to apply to the GKN Aerospace Global Graduate Programme 2020. Click here to send in your application!
Time has really
flown by for the trainee-group lately. It feels like something we say quite
often, but now that we have come home from the trip across the pond (January
25th) it has been non-stop of various fun activities. First of all, we have
actually switched rotations, which is a bit wistful because you may not have
gotten get as far as you would have wanted with the project in 10 weeks, but it
is really fun to try something new! It will be really interesting for me to
gain experience within Finance/Business Development as I will work with M&A
(Mergers & Acquisitions).
In addition to
our new rotations we have clearly noticed that the recruitment process is at
full speed, as GKN is participating in four career fairs over the course of 1.5
weeks! CHARM (Gothenburg), Trainee Day (Gothenburg), Hotspot (Karlstad) and
LARM (Linköping). The trainees were at CHARM and will be participating on the
Trainee Day as well as LARM next week, so we hope to see you there!
Lastly, we have taken the opportunity to participate in events to spread the interest in technology and aviation/space to youths. Right now we are participating at Futurum here in Trollhättan, an event orchestrated by Innovatum with the purpose to inspire high school students to continue with their studies and to work in various exciting professions! The event is over 6 days and over 750 students from all over Fyrbodal (Fyrbodal is a fusion of the cities Trollhättan, Uddevalla, Vänersborg and Lysekil, as well as Bohuslän and Dalsland) visit during these days!
A high school student got the opportunity to try our VR-experience
Been extremely fun to be able to talk a bit about my own journey and GKN as well as why the aviation industry and our own technology and products are exciting!
To give you a small taste of what our presentation was about, you can find a short clip below that we have put together. The video shows three companies that all develop so-called eVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing. That is, small electric aircraft that can lift and land vertically, so that they can easily be used in cities. This, if anything, is futuristic technology that is becoming a reality right now!
eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing)
So it has been some hectic and fun weeks that will continue on keeping the same pace for at least another week, so you can expect a lot of updates from us going forward!
A couple of weeks ago my trainee companion Hampus wrote about additive manufacturing (AM) and compared the functionality of the technology in real life versus the “Buzzword” and its expectations. With that, I though it would be a fun subject to continue with, but regarding agile work methods instead.
You probably already know something about the subject, under the last period of my studies it felt like I heard it from every company I talked to. Everybody “works agile” and pushed on the fact that this is the way to go for organisations to be able to still be a strong contender in their respective industry. Although, since no company actually explained why they used that method and merely spoke about the positive affects without any concrete explaination I got a relatively negative association to the buzzword. It only felt as is the companies brought it up to be trendy and be seemed as an attractive employer for newly graduated students.
For you who has never heard of it before, or you who are where I stood earlier and only heard the positive sides of it without any clear explanation to why that is; here is a short introduction to what the agile method actually is.
The easiest way to explain the agile working method is to compare it to the traditional methods, the so called waterfall method. In this classic project methodology you use sequential phases such as define, build, test and release. Every phase has to be completed before moving on to the next and the project can not go back to a previous stage. Most commonly you work with the entire product you want to release in to the market. However, with the agile methodology you are using iterative cycles where you have the same four steps as mentioned previously but you do it in small batches (sprints) multiple times instead where you work with a smaller part of the whole product during each batch (increment). For an easy comparison between the two methodologies, see figure underneath.
Waterfall vs Agile Methodology
After learned more about the concept and had the opportunity to be involved in a team at GKN utilising this way of working I have to say that all of my negative associations towards the buzzword has completely disappeared, since you can clearly see the advantages it provides. But instead of me talking your ears off it is better if I just list the top three things I believe that agile working improves.
Reducing complexity and difficulty while planning (define phase)
Since perfect information does not exist the waterfall method is difficult to use proficiently in real life, due to the fact that you will learn more about the market, the product and future possibilities over time. This makes it less optimal when completing the planning stage which is what is done in the very beginning of the project, since the circumstances will most likely change. With an agile method of working the planning is instead done in each interactive cycle, which leads to being more flexible when it comes to changes.
Focusing on the real value of what the product can provide
You usually say that 80 percent of the value comes from 20 percent of the functionalities in a product. In the waterfall method you do not know what these 20 percent are until you deliver the product to the costumer who will find it themselves through using it. The agile method, however, creates small increments at a time instead of delivering the entire product immediatly. This provides the opportunity of showcasing these increments and communicating with the costumer which will further lead to finding the real value, and furthermore be able to focus on the imporant parts.
Reducing risks
Working with the agile method will also reduce risks during the product development stage through always delivering and presenting the increments of the finished product to the costumer. This will cause feedback to come at early stage in the process and as a result decreasing the time and cost of possible corrections, in comparison to doing changes on a complete product if the costumer is not satisfied.
Hope this small introduction to the buzzword “agile” was useful and provided a brief understanding that it actually provides more value than just marketing the product!
My first post on this blog and my first blogpost ever actually. Didn´t think my blog career would start in connection to my first job, but really fun to be able to share what we actually are doing as trainees!
This week has also been filled with action. Firstly, “training days” is an event occurring right now at the Trollhättan site. The event is over two weeks where you have the opportunity to attend in-house courses/lectures presented by co-workers, which is a perfect opportunity to learn more about areas you find interesting!
One example of a fascinating lectures was “Clean Sky”, which is a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European aeronautics industry. The overarching goal with Clean Sky is through this partnership, developing innovative, cutting-edge technology aimed at reducing CO2, gas emissions and noise levels produced by aircraft, which in a longer perspective also will contribute to the sustainable development goals. GKN is a part of several projects within Clean Sky and an example is the aviation engine in the image below, it is a prototype (demonstrator) developed by the company Safran in an attempt to come up with new ways to reduce fuel consumption further.
Open Rotor Engine – Safran
In addition to interesting lectures, we also had trainees from Saab visiting here in Trollhättan. It was a great deal of fun to have the opportunity to present our company (also interesting to test how much we have actually learned), network and hear about their trainee arrangement.
Cheerful group gathered
That was all from me this time, have a nice weekend and we´ll be in touch soon again!
