Meet the graduates - Future leaders of Rolls-Royce

Our story starts with 25-year-old Chin Kei Lin, a student of material science and engineering from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Kei Lin’s passion for aerospace engineering began with a Rolls-Royce’s Manufacturing Tech team internship in Derby, England.

Today, Kei Lin works under Rolls-Royce’s Manufacturing Engineering (ME) graduate programme which recruits and develops talent to help turn ideas into real innovations that impact the company and industry. She’s in the first of three rotations through different ME teams, and this first job has her working with one of Rolls-Royce’s largest suppliers in Malaysia, UMW. The company supplies fan cases for Rolls-Royce’s Trent 1000 engines. Kei Lin aims to get her suppliers on board with the Zero Defects movement – an initiative started by Rolls-Royce to create defect-free parts, ensuring that engines perform up to standard. She often spends her time at UMW’s shop floor, ensuring that each and every product is up to par. “It’s a challenging job. I’m frequently asked questions that I don’t know the answer to. But, I like that it forces me to be resourceful and to be a problem-solver.”

Kei Lin’s fan cases are delivered across to Rolls-Royce’s Seletar Assembly and Test Unit (SATU) in Singapore, where the different modules of the Trent 1000 engines all come together for final assembly and testing before being delivered to customers.

With Sky’s engine stand, Kei Lin’s fan cases from UMW can complete their journey to be placed on a working engine. However, the journey doesn’t stop there. Just above the plant floor at Rolls-Royce’s Seletar office sits a team of data mavens, working tirelessly to analyse lines of code and rows of data. Here we find Gennie Neo, the first ever Strategic Marketing Group (SMG) graduate, working together with the R² Data Labs team to churn data through cutting-edge analytics tools, delivering added value to Rolls-Royce’s customers.

Under the SMG programme, Gennie has had the opportunity to work in a variety of roles around the world, including an internal communications role in London, a Strategy and Business Development role in Germany and in China before coming to this digitally-focused role in Singapore. “There are a lot of opportunities to travel around with Rolls-Royce. But what’s more important is that people here are very willing to teach and mentor you. I am learning quite a lot, because the people that guide me also put me in challenging situations to learn,” says Gennie.

As a graduate from the University College London (UCL), with a major in management science and minor in aerospace, Gennie finds her current role with Rolls-Royce’s R² Data Labs an excellent fit. Today, Gennie and the team work closely with an airline customer on a data analysis and visualisation project which helps the customer improve their on-time arrivals. While the work sounds very technical, Gennie feels that her efforts hold much meaning. “Recently, I had a moment at the airport where it struck me that all the travellers around me were the ones which benefit from the work that my team is doing. At the end of the day, it makes their travel as seamless and pleasant as possible. These are moments that make me feel that what I am doing is meaningful.”

Rolls-Royce’s engines power more than just aircraft. They work with buildings, heavy machinery and even ships too. In Hamburg, Germany, pilot boats, used by nautical officers to help guide visiting ships safely into port, are powered by Rolls-Royce’s MTU engines equipped with sensors, which transmits data to a computer over 10,000 km away back in Singapore.

Here, in Rolls-Royce’s IoT Labs, a young electrical engineering graduate by the name of Hans Ivander analyses the engine’s performance data. As part of the IoT team at Rolls-Royce’s Emerging Technology department, Hans tracks the engine’s usage, providing predictive maintenance and helping the customers in Germany increase reliability and decrease downtime.

Solving the problems of the future requires the talent of tomorrow, and these graduates are great examples of how Rolls-Royce raises the next generation of innovators, engineers, data scientists and managers to meet these upcoming challenges.

Our story comes to a close in a conference room in Rolls-Royce’s Seletar office, where all of our graduates have gathered for a chat on their incredible journeys around the world thanks to the graduate programme. Although they will part ways soon, there stands a very good chance that they will meet again in the future – this time as managers, executives and leaders – working together to push the boundaries of technological innovation for a brighter future.