Aerobloggen

Graduate Trainee Gustav Soderberg signs up to write his first blogpost, as you know, you can read about all Trainees under the tab “Trainees through the years”.

I have the honor to write about half of our activity week. But first I’ll start at the right end. On 7^th September, I officially started at GKN Aerospace Trainee scheme, for me it is a welcome return. We had a really good and what you would expect, solid start as a trainee. What was funny was that we all got things to produce manually in the manual milling and turning machines.

Followed by two weeks of practice around various workshops and its functions linked to production, to finish everyone got to recapitulate what they did but primarily what their functions do and how products flow. Even for me who have been around the company a number of years taught me a lot about how we do our products. What repeatedly strikes me is that the skill everyone possesses is advanced among employees, it is important to emphasize. I’m aiming to be a part of it.

After this, we carried out an activity week, Linn has already opened the floor for me. CybAero was fun to visit as an old shareholder. Public affairs office was incredibly rewarding from employee perspective. I would like to propose that the two Gentlemen get time internally to present their work, challenges and thoughts for everyone.

At last we visited the SAS Group HQ (Scandinavian Airlines). This visit, I personally looked forward very much to. Why? Well at GKN Trollhättan & GKN we manufacture engine parts and other components mounted on many of the different aircraft SAS operates. We arrived early in the morning, we would meet with Niklas Hårdänge, Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Asset Management, Asset Management, I interpret in this occasion that it is about their airplanes, in Swedish, he has the head responsibility for their fleet. What we knew was that we would get a session in fleet strategy, engine service, contract management and LEAN. We met up with three people, one of whom had worked for Volvo Aero before in Florida at Engine Services. I and Toni gave a corporate presentation about GKN as they had asked for it. They had a couple of heavy and specific questions naturally. Later we were led to their LEAN department where we got a very good review by two SAS LEAN experts. They have come very far in their work, but still have challenges.

To summarize this visit – professionalism is the word. They received us exceptionally well kept times and had stitched together a very ambitious schedule packed with comprehensive material. They really wanted us to understand them and learn from us, they were inquisitive, they were explanatory and it was obvious that they did not take our visit as one in the crowd, even if they behaved as they always do, they deserve applause.

We ended our activity week with two days in Bokenäs, a conference center in the archipelago. The theme was group development. We tackled easy and difficult challenges, including swimming .. October 1 ..

Its weekend and I have just finished a course in corporate governance and investment strategy.

#Long road trips are evolving with the proper company
#Public Affairs, should all get to listen to
#Good planning takes time
#The treatment at SAS, world class!
#The refugee situation, what do you do?
#Bathe in October, check
#My trainee colleagues, 🙂
#New Trollhätte citizen, Mikael Ingvarsson

The time has come for me, Linn, to make my first contribution to this blog. If you want to know more about me you can find the presentation on this webpage.

The three first weeks in Trollhättan has been extremely educational and fun. It has been a lot of introductions and a short internship in the factory. Now we’re all out on an activity week. At the moment, we’re on a field trip which started out in Linköping where we visited a company called CybAero. A very interesting company that develops and manufactures unmanned helicopters, so called VTOL RPAS (Vertical Take Off and Landing Remotely Piloted Aircraft System). These can for example be used for surveillance of power lines or in marine search operations. It was fascinating to learn about their technology and business as well as to learn their story as an expanding company. Below one can see a photo of us trainees together with Rasmus Lundqvist from CybAero and two helicopter models.

On day number two, we visited Stockholm and GKN Public Affairs (PA) whose office is situated in the city center of Stockholm. PA can be described as the relationship between the organization and stakeholders. These stakeholders can for example be politicians, decision makers, customers and business organizations. One explains organizational policies and views in order to improve the organization’s ability to operate successfully. Hannes Carl Borg and Stefan Hjort at PA gave us an introduction to their work and pointed out that one should always remember that the activity at GKN is highly affected by political decisions, especially regarding the military and space activities. Below you can see a picture from Stockholm of the whole group of Graduate Engineers together with our hosts Hannes Carl Borg and Stefan Hjort.

I would like to use this moment in order to thank both Rasmus Lundqvist at CybAero and Hannes Carl Borg and Stefan Hjort at Public Affairs GKN Aerospace Engine Systems for two very interesting and educational visits. Next stop is SAS HQ, you will hear more about our visit there in the next blog post.

Seven weeks have already passed since I started at GKN Aerospace. My first rotation is at a department responsible for the introduction of new products, estimating cost for new businesses and global projects within GKN Aerospace Engine Systems. It’s at this department where I will start working after the trainee-period.

During the seven weeks I had two assignments. The first assignment is a part of a global project within manufacturing engineering, which aims to enhance delivery precision and cost reduction of poor quality by improving the robustness of our processes and to work in a standardized way throughout the Aerospace division. The second assignment is regarding control reduction of a newly introduced high volume product. The aim is to show that the process is stable enough to remove a control operation.

Yesterday the workshop period ended with a tour of the different workshops. All trainees got to show where they have been working during the workshop period and which value streams they have followed. It was extremely rewarding to share the experiences from various parts of the business and I believe that the experience gained will most likely come in handy during the rest of the trainee period.

Quality, precision and excellence. These words describe my overall impression of the business after having spent two weeks in the area where the value literally is created; in the workshops.

With previous experience within the manufacturing industry, I immediately felt at home in the manufacturing area at GKN. However, I quickly realized that my perception of what high quality really is had to be reappraised, because at GKN Aerospace, quality has been taken to new heights. At this company, quality is measured not only in hundredths of a millimeter, but in thousandths of a millimeter.

This was an eye opener for me and is definitely something that I will take with me in future assignments within the company. I just hope that this insight won’t affect my everyday life, because it’s not really time efficient to use a slide caliper to make sure that the shoe laces have exactly the same length on both sides of the knot, especially when you need to hurry for the 05:10-bus in the morning.

Hi and welcome to a new beginning of Aerobloggen!

As you may have noticed, the old cover photo has been replaced with a new one. A new group of young graduates have entered the program and will be providing new content to this blog. This time, the regular five entrants will be joined by two more from the international graduate program of GKN.

My name is Mikael, I’m the guy in the far left corner of the picture, and by my side I have Dennis and Daniel leaning over an RM 12 jet engine. Toni, Linn, Sofie and Gustav are seated in the front. If you’re curious of who is who and why, you will soon be able to read about us in the Our young graduates section (I might be in there already ;-O).

Familiar followers of the blog, or if you’ve just read the last post from Cissi, probably know how the graduate program usually take shape. We will be assigned different tasks throughout the site in Trollhättan along with study visits and activities and during the last three months leave for an internship abroad. We’re all very eager to see what is to come! We’ll keep you updated through periodic posts here in the blog. Also, stay tuned for information about the international graduate program, which we at the time of writing know little about.

After the last week’s introduction, we are currently out in the production, learning about the manufacturing of aerospace components. More of our experiences will be shared in up-coming posts.

See you soon!

Mikael and the others

After two weeks of relaxing vacation I am since last week back at the office in Trollhättan. The other graduates are still on vacation, but I chose to have a short one this year to get some sun in another country in later autumn. So I am already at my new desk where my work as a Design Engineer in the GEnx TRF project has just begun. Last week, it was almost spooky quiet here since the most of my colleagues were still on their vacation, which, if I’m being honest, made my days pretty slow. Not that I didn’t have anything to do; my colleagues have given me an enormous amount of reports, power points and web pages to read through. It was a good start since it gave me a crash course of the product, but after eight hours of technical reading each day my brain was pretty bruised. And here I though the studies were over for my part? Nope! So I’m looking forward to begin the “real work” now when my colleagues are back.

The “GEnx TRF”, what is that then? GEnx is one of GE’s engines that is being used in Boeing’s air crafts 787 Dreamliner and 747-8 (there are two versions of the engine, one for each air craft). The abbreviation stands for “GE Next Generation”. The abbreviations are by the way almost the hardest thing to understand… For those who understand technical data, I can tell that the engines have take-off thrust of 66,500-76,100 lbf, a fan diameter of 2,8 meters respectively 2,7 meters and has a 15% lesser fuel consumption that CF6, another of GE’s engines. I actually had the opportunity to look at the fan case when I was in Newington; it is a pretty impressive sight! TRF stands for “Turbine Rear Frame” and is the part in the end of the engine. It is also a quite amazing product since it has to withstand the high temperatures in the rear of the engine and the big loads it is subjected to, among other things.

Another fun thing is that we a couple of weeks ago got the names of the GKN graduates 2015/2016 that starts a month from now. The curiosity is great of course! Up till then the blog will probably be pretty calm, even if I surely pop in here every once in a while.

Keep calm until then!