Hi everyone!
Hope you all have had a lovely summer. We are now back to work and preparing for our next rotation. This autumn/winter we will be doing one more rotation but then we will switch to doing a collaborative project together instead. Super exciting! It is not yet decided what it will be, but we will let you know as soon as we can.
Cheers,
Elin
Hello!
The UN has presented 17 global goals directed to all of the countries in the world that will help us to achieve four fantastic things year 2030:
We, the graduates, have created a video that will tell you more about how we at GKN Aerospace work with global goal #9 – Industry, innovation and infrastructure. This video was brought to you by a collaboration with Innovatum here in Trollhättan as studying material for students in the region.
Be sure to read more about the global goals here: https://www.globalgoals.org/
Hi there!
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!
During the last two weeks a group at GKN in Trollhättan has been printing safety visors for hospitals, clinics and nursing homes in the nearby region. The printers, which are usually used to manufacture prototypes and tools, have been running non-stop to meet the demand. At the end of this week we will have delivered some 500 visors. We expect the demand to remain high, so we will probably keep making them as fast as we can for a while.
The help has been much appreciated by the healthcare workers and we are happy to be able to contribute. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something!
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.
Greetings blog!
This week we have gotten some restrictions on what we are allowed to publish.
We are not allowed to reveal more than this, who knows, next year´s candidate might be reading this post!
Hello, blog!
It’s been a busy week in Trollhättan, both considering activities at our current department rotations and activities with the trainees.
At my current department I work alongside one of our most senior manufacturing engineers in exciting projects where we are investigating concepts and business cases for future opportunities to introduce additive manufacturing. We also partake in the daily work with one of our existing high volume products, the intermediate compressor case for an engine called PW1100. It is a Pratt & Whitney engine which you can find on the Airbus A320 Neo. It’s a quite different tempo when working close to manufacturing compared to technology development, which is what I did last fall.
With the trainee group we’ve done a lot of preparations for next week, when it’s time for… *drum roll* … Graduate selection! It will be two packed days where we will get to meet our future colleagues. We’ve been waiting eagerly since January!
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.
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.
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!
Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!
The trainees are now at LARM career fair!
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!