Engineer / Harness manufacturing / Production / Governmental helicopter.

Hello,

My name is Dirk. I work at Eurocopter in Donauwörth in the production Department for Governmental Helicopters as coordinator for harnesses manufacturing.

I joined Eurocopter after finishing my studies in Electrical Engineering (Information and Communication Technology) at the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg.

My job

I am in charge to manage the manufacturing of the NH90’s Electrical Harnesses, that means the electrical wiring between connectors, electrical boxes, computers and equipment. There are more than 280 harnesses in each helicopter.

The team, for which I am the responsible, works on technical documentation, the morphology and the manufacturing definition of the harness.
In addition, I coordinate the fulfillment of the specification and quality requirements, the contracts with the suppliers and the delivery schedule with all the dedicated departments to be in accordance with the needs of the Final Assembly Line in Donauwörth.
We also give and receive feedback to and from the Design Department and the Manufacturer (Supplier) after and during the installation of the Harnesses in the Final Assembly Line to reach optimized production as soon as possible.At present, I am also responsible for a diploma thesis which is defining a manufacturing Tool for a very special Harness which consists of more then 1200 wires. This thesis is created under a synergy project with our French colleagues.

The team is actually mainly working in France and I have to coordinate and close open Items which occur in Donauwörth on the delivered harnesses during installation and test. That means, I am often on weekly business trips to Eurocopter France (Marignane), the suppliers plants or in meetings with our customers which take place in an international constitution of French, German, Italian etc. colleagues and partners. I am also in front of the National Quality Assurance Responsibles which is a special department of our Governmental Customer.
Of course, English is the working language.

What I like about my job is that I work as an interface between all the different departments and international partners (Quality, Design, Manufacturing, Purchasing, Procurement, Planning, Work Engineering,...). I enjoy covering and solving situations in real time, speeding up processes and having an amount of daily work, but also some activities where I don’t know what occurs before the end of the day.

My Beginning at Eurocopter as a trainee

I wanted to work in the aeronautics industry. That is the reason why I started my experience in Aeronautics with an internship at EADS-Airbus Hamburg. Afterwards, Eurocopter made me the best with a Eurocopter internal trainee program. The start was in the Design Department of the Airbus A380 for 6 months. After this, I spent 6 months in the Configuration Management Department for Commercial Helicopters and finally in the Production Department for Tiger and NH90 where I decided to stay.
It was a great opportunity to get an overview of the global processes and also of most of the different programs (Airbus, EC135, EC145, Tiger and NH90) and activities Eurocopter is working on. I enjoyed this time as I learned in a very short phase a lot about our Company, supported by the Human Resources Department.

I recommend the trainee program to young graduates to have a good understanding of detailed daily work in an industrial Company but also to get familiar with the different activities within different Departments.

What after?

I am currently discussing new tasks and a new position in the near future in the Governmental Helicopter Department. Working in a big company also means having a lot of possibilities to use the background of the old job to fulfill the responsibilities of new tasks and challenges.