Aerobloggen

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.

Hello there blog lovers, 

As of today we are no longer the only trainees at the company and with that said I would like to give the new trainees a warm welcome! You will get the opportunity to get to know them better in a near future.

Two weeks ago we got a visit from some of ABB’s trainees.

We hosted them for an afternoon where they got an introduction to our company, a tour of one of our product’s work flow and a presentation by our very own Kasper Janehag about digitalisation and Industry 4.0. We ended the afternoon with an after work with some good food and drinks! It is always fun to meet other trainees and exchange experiences.

Now I would like to promote another exiting thing. As an employee with still one foot in the trainee world I will now use the trainee blog platform to promote a new initiative at GKN Aerospace Sweden (GAS). We are a small group of happy individuals that are creating a network for young professionals on both a local and a global level in GKN. The purpose of Young@GAS is to inspire, encourage creative thinking, create possibilities for both personal and professional development as well as increase the collaboration between the young employees and the company.

If you are a GAS employee and you think, as we do, that this is an awesome initiative we would very much like for you to come to an information meeting on Thursday the 6th of September at 11.15 in Aulan. Come and get inspired to be involved and join our events the coming year!

/Maria

Hello all blog lovers,

I have just arrived home from a visit to the Farnborough airshow. Lisa mentioned in our last post that Lisa, Signe and I got the opportunity to visit the show for a marketing analysis to scout for new technologies and cool companies. And I can tell you, there is a lot of them! The event was held by no other than Chris Gear, Chief Technology Officer GKN Aerospace. It was a great opportunity to meet with him and exchange ideas.

We also got the chance to network with some of GKN’s British and American graduates. It is always fun to meet and exchange experience. We also took the opportunity to do some other fun things, but one day was way too short to explore the whole area. Here is some of the stuff we got to do.

As a supplier to Boeing we got a private tour and try to pilot seat in their 737 and 787 plans.

The US army invited us to both their fighter helicopter Apache and their military aircrafts, the Hercules, where we also got to try the cockpit.

We also got the chance to see the complete PW 1100G engine in real life (FINALLY). The three of us has in some way all worked with the engine.

The blog will take some summer holiday a couple of weeks but is back in the end of august. We also will be leaving the blog in the hands of our new graduate colleagues who starts in September.

Hope you have a great summer
/Maria

Dear beloved blog reader, do not despair! Your long lost favorite blog writer is finally back again 😉

I conceive that you all spent many sleepless nights wondering about how I am doing. How has his time in Holland been? What has he done since the last blog post? How has he managed the conversion from a trainee to a simple office-worker? Do not worry – I’m glad to announce to all of you that both my body and soul are on top!

My six months in Holland made a fantastic experience, and although my final assignment was not exactly as planned, I learned a vast amount of things along the way. I was part of a project introducing new products, which is exactly the type of work that I want to lead in the future. I was responsible for planning and scheduling as well as monitoring the activity plan. A work that may not sound like the most exciting of them all, but if you, just as I do, get aroused by complicated Excel formulas and nice looking graphs, I can promise that it will get the senses spinning wild.

Besides my professional duties, I made sure to experience all the best that Holland has to offer, and I met new friends who hopefully will be with me for the rest of my life. It was undeniably with mixed feelings that I left Holland in the beginning of May, to return to my much loved and missed Trollhättan <3

Now I’ve been on my new position for almost one month already, and I must say I got a flying start. I once again work in a project with new product introductions. This time as product manufacturing engineer and with the Japanese customer Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Working with a customer from the other side of the world and a whole new culture of course means a lot of unforeseen experiences and challenges, not least in terms of quality demands and unpronounced expectations. At the same time it is incredibly fun and exciting! For example, at which other workplace in Sweden will you be offered prawn and mussel cakes with the coffee?

As you have surely understood by now, I am like a duck to water in my new project, and it’s a wonderful atmosphere and great work commitment in the project group! With that said, I now leave the word to my trainee son-in-law Alexander, who in the next post will tell you about how it feels to finally have his biggest role models back in Sweden.

Buongiorno all blog lovers,

We have just got home from one of our notorious activity weeks (we actually do more than just travel, I promise). The destination was Italy with several eventful company visits.

GKN Sinter Metals Milano
We opened the week strong with a visit to GKN Sinter Metals Milano. We were welcomed by Massimo Sala, Production & Plant Engineering Manager, who offered us everything from candy to stories from all his years within the company. This was our first visit to a Sinter Metals site, so some of us (myself included) had what you might call “a limited knowledge” of the sintering process. This was no match for the experienced Massimo who really gave us a comprehensive yet very detailed overview of the entire Powder Metallurgy Division and sintering process. Sinter Metals Milano has more than 50 customers in more than 20 countries and delivers metal parts to e.g. the automotive industry. For those who are not familiar with sintering it is, very simplified, a process of forming metal parts from powder with the help from pressure and heat. First, you squeeze metal powder into a mold, then “bake” the part in an oven to lock the material properties.

After the presentation we got a tour of the factory where we in true LEAN spirit followed the flow of the product; from mixing of metal powder to shipment of finished details. In addition to compression molding and heat treatment, the details can go through milling operations, tumbling and seizing. Massimo also showed their interactive touch-TV screens which they have in production. You can check everything from the weather to who is working in production to machine capacity. Something we graduates think we should introduce at our site. The white board era is over!

Avio Aero Turin
On Tuesday we drove about two hours west of Milan to a rainy Turin to visit our customer Avio Aero, one of General Electric’s Aerospace companies. We met with Guilia Marti who works as a buyer where GKN Aerospace Sweden is one of her customers. We received a presentation of the entire Avio Aero and we discussed customer-supplier relations. Guilia who, in comparison to many other hosts we met, was quite young, and she told us how it is to work at GE. She told us that a big difference since GE bought Avio Aero is that it has become a more transparent business environment which promotes rotations within the company to spread knowledge. A very interesting meeting which put our own company in relation to a complete-engine manufacturer.

See ya, 
Maria

Hi dear blog readers,

May month, summer is here and it has now been 8 months since we started our trainee program. Time flies! I am now on my third trainee rotation, which unfortunately is coming to an end.

After trying out purchasing, logistics development and seeing some of our production, I was curious about how we think about our future business, so for me it was natural to do this rotation within Business Development. During the past weeks I have been focusing on the Asian market, where a lot of work is done concentrated on business intelligence, creating relations and negotiating various types of agreements. This is done with aim on countries such as India, China, Japan, Korea, etc. During my trainee rotation, I have been involved in working on an exciting business opportunity for GKN, which has been really fun. I have learned a lot about export control, that is, what is legal to deliver or manufacture in which places of the world. I have also worked with our technology department which has been fun to get a more technical approach to the business opportunity. As you may understand, future business opportunities include sensitive information and are therefore secret for now. I cannot go into detail, but if this deal is sealed, I promise you will hear about it.

Now, we are all preparing for our next activity week which starts on Sunday. Italy is the destination and we have many exciting company visits planned. Hopefully we will have good weather and be able to have one or two gelatos between the visits, yummy!

Arrivederci!

/Emma

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.