After surviving all the repelling and the jumps, it was time to expand our ZF network a little. During our first week, we got the opportunity to meet with the previous batch of trainees. We planned an evening with some interesting activities such as speed dating and other games to get to know them better. Our Indian trainees also made some Kaiserschmarn that night which also happened to be only the second time that they had ever cooked. It was one more of those many instances as a member of the ZF family you venture into areas you had never been before.
The upcoming week was more professional and intense: the fun and games thinned down and we began with our project management training to be well prepared for the first tasks that were assigned to us, two big group projects. One is about the topic diversity at ZF and the second one focuses on the development of scenarios for autonomous driving. As a first step, the team was broken into two smaller groups of ten and eleven members. The groups were selected to ensure a diverse range of educations and nationalities on each team, meaning the industrial engineers were evenly split between the teams and so on. Each group maintains a task of rotating the project leadership throughout the term of the project to both challenge the teams and allow for the teams members to gain experience. The projects will be completed in a year’s time at which point, the teams will have the opportunity to present the projects in front of the ZF Board of Management in January of 2020.
While working together it was amazing to see how a diverse group of people cooperate closely and effectively to put together a project plan presentation within a week. At the end of this central event, we were confident and happy that the ice had been broken and we were on the road to an exciting 15 months in the ZF Global Trainee Program. Stay tuned with our blog for more interesting stories of trainees and central events.
