UAA 'On Tour' at ZF in Nottingham

On Thursday 23rd January 2014, 5 UNITECH students participated in a tour held at the ZF Services facility in Nottingham. This is part of their aftermarket organisation supporting ZF products and brands in the UK.

Our day started off at 10:00, where we started looking at their processes of ensuring they have a skilled workforce who can cover various aspects that ZF Services deal with. We looked at car gearboxes, military gearboxes, marine gearboxes and commercial gearboxes in one part of their facility. There are a lot of processes that need to happen to ensure there is accountability throughout, in case there is a failure or warranty claim. This helps the mechanic/technician who might be attempting to diagnose a fault half way across the world to go step and step to work out where the fault may lie.

Throughout the day, we had the opportunity to ask lots of questions in order to understand more about how everything works. The next part of their facility contained more stations to work on their car products and we then moved onto their dedicated rail facility. This has just been expanded with additional cranes so they can take on more work, with the ever increasing rail industry. The size and weight of these products are phenomenal! We then moved onto their third facility which works on an upcoming market, wind turbines. This section is quite special as it's logistical process works quite differently to the other sections.

Finally, we looked at the car steering wheel section, where the customer works in conjunction and has a dedicated area to meet their needs within the ZF facility. This was the final stage of the tour, which we completed with questions at 12:30.

Overall, this gave us an insight into a company which mainly deals with B2B (which most people overlook as they cannot find any way of associating with them) and has a lot to offer their employees and potential engineers who are interested in working for them.

Picture taken: ZF Facilities, Thursday 23rd January 2014
Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Abdi Hussein (Loughborough University, UK), Huzaifa Essajee (UAA LCC) and Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

 

Picture taken: ZF Facilities, Thursday 23rd January 2014
Abdi Hussein (Loughborough University, UK), Huzaifa Essajee (UAA LCC), Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Stina Klingvall (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Picture taken: ZF Facilities, Thursday 23rd January 2014
John Bland (Head of Production, ZF Services UK Ltd), Huzaifa Essajee (UAA LCC), Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Stina Klingvall (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Second year as UAA LCC UK - 2013/2014

After the UNITECH International (UTI) and UNITECH Alumni Association (UAA) General Assembly that took place in Milan, Italy during the first week of September 2013, I was ready to come back and work with Dave Jenner on running the UAA Local UNITECH Chapter (LUC) UK. This will be the second year that the LUC is running and active in the UK, since Loughborough joined the UTI programme in 2010.

As Caterpillar has joined the UNITECH programme in the UK (being approved at the UTI GA), I promoted their first campus wide recruitment event to the incoming UNITECH students, which took place on Tuesday 8th October 2013. All students had a chance to go on one of their diggers which Caterpillar had brought onto campus and operate it!

Next, for our first UAA event, we welcomed the incoming UNITECH 2013/2014 students by organising a welcome dinner at The Moon & Bell in town, on Sunday 20th October 2013. I chose this location as I hoped it would give the UNITECHers a chance to eat some typical "British" food. Four out of the five incoming students could make it to this event. We started at around 7:30pm (19:30) and enjoyed our dinner, talking about life and culture, comparing it to the various countries everyone was from. It's such a nice feeling to talk about our previous experiences in Germany and Sweden. 

Picture taken: The Moon and Bell, Sunday 20th October 2013 
Huzaifa Essajee (UAA LCC), Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Daniele Simone (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Stina Klingvall (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Picture taken: The Moon and Bell, Sunday 20th October 2013
 David Jenner (UAA LCC), Rudy Birkner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Daniele Simone (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Stina Klingvall (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) and Florian Scheidegger (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Later on in the evening, Abdi joined us after just flying back from his UNITECH internship with ZF which took place in Germany and Czech Republic! Just shows the UNITECH spirit and enthusiasm among all the UNITECH participants. It was great to catch up with him as well, since we were from the UNITECH 2011/2012 year group (Abdi, Dave and I). We could spend ages talking and enjoying life, however, with the next day being a Monday, we decided to go home around 10:30pm (22:30).

On Thursday 23rd October 2013, Dr. Ashraf El-Hamalawi (UNITECH Programme Director at Loughborough) held his first promotion session for exchange programmes in the Civil and Building Engineering department. Three of the UNITECH students, Miquel (from UPC Barcelona), Rudy and Stina along with myself, promoted the UNITECH programme. It was really good for all of us to be present, as I gave general information on the UNITECH programme and the UAA, whereas the others gave some detailed information regarding the activities that occur throughout. Consequently, I have been informed that a lot of interest has been shown in the programme and hopefully we will see an increase in applications for UNITECH year 2014/2015. Aiming for more than 7 applications this year!

P.S. Anyone looking for UNITECH internships with Caterpillar? You'll be based in the UK. Log onto the UNITECH database, go to Company profiles, then click on Caterpillar where you will find the UNITECH contact and details. However, don't delay your speculative applications!

School's out!

Oops! It's been a long time since I blogged. Apologise if this post is not coherent, I've only slept about 3-4 hours. Why? Partly because I felt like it, but also since the sun's out early, it usually wakes me up. Also, I was playing table-tennis/ping-pong with Hao and Scott until late (sorry I don't know how to spell Scott's Chinese name).

A lot has happened since. I've hosted two German guys, a Polish girl, a Canadian girl and my Polish friend from the UK who I lived with during my internship. I've finished my year here at Chalmers University of Technology! This is where you have mixed feelings that school is over but you need to say goodbye to lots of friends. Also, it was weird the first few days as it felt like I should be studying, especially since everyone back at my home university are only just about to start exams next week.

Last week was more or less summer, with the maximum temperatures between 21-26ºC. It's good if you have nothing to do and can chillax and enjoy the weather. However, if you have to study, then you don't really want it to be more than 21ºC as otherwise your room is too hot and you cannot concentrate. This happened to me when I was writing my take home exam. I just managed to get it done before the 23:59 deadline. I was always ahead of schedule on the previous ones, yet I did have an exam the day before this take home exam. Anyway, after all this, I managed to be able to spend some time with my friend Piotr (English equivalent would be Peter) travelling around Gothenburg, checking out the southern archipelago by bike as well as being at the peak of the Botanical Gardens, enjoying the peace and silence out there in the sun, until other tourists joined. My legs ached at the end of all this sightseeing as we had cycled nearly everywhere for the whole day, everyday, but it was worth it.

What else has happened? Well, I'm quite sure you've all heard that Sweden won the Eurovision contest last Saturday. The UK were far from winning, but at least I thought I could join in on the celebrations of Sweden winning, wondering what happens when you are in the winning country. Although not a lot of Swedes were interested and no one was really celebrating around the city. Lots of interesting entries and cultures, with the Russians being a memorable one.

A few weeks back, GöteborgsVarvet took place around the city, half-marathon. I was invited by Bea to come and watch and I thought, why not? I had a lot of work to do, but I thought I could spare a few hours and watch since you don't always get a chance to do so. I live in London and have never gone to see the London Marathon, so this was a good time to check it out live rather than watch it on television. It's got me interested and possibly I'm thinking of running a marathon at some point.

What other crazy ideas do I have? Well, I would like to become fluent in French and Swedish. I've done French for 5 years at school, and at the time I thought it was pointless to learn another language as I would never leave England. Well, that backfired! Also, since I've lived in Sweden for 9 months, and fallen in love with Gothenburg, I feel that I should learn Swedish as I have some vocabulary already. Moreover, it's to prove a point that I can learn another language if I put my mind to it, especially outside the country. Let's see if I can do it!

Now, I'm just going to sit in Gothenburg and wait for a response from a potential company if I have secured an internship. To get one in Sweden is unlikely, and there is nothing suitable here. I've kind of started clearing out stuff (I love to collect stuff that others throw away and fix them up!) and have got my suitcase open ready for packing. Now I just need to fill it up and see how much I can fit in one suitcase and what I'll do with everything else.

That's it from me for now. Let me know how good or bad my English was in this post.