About My Research

This site serves as a reflection of my graduate thesis work in automotive textile design at North Carolina State University.  I began this site in January 2009 and plan to maintain it until my graduation in December 2009.  I have been in the graduate program at the College of Textiles for 1 year of a 2 year program.  During this first year, I have focused on the automotive industry, design, and sustainability.  Now at the half-way point, I have selected my thesis topic and made plans as to how to approach my research so that my work is complete by October 2009.  In the right column of this blog, I have posted my personal timeline to ensure that I am meeting my deadlines.  Please take time to look through all the information included in the right hand column, especially if this is your first time visiting this site.

The purpose of this site is 3-fold.
1) Most scholars are only given 1 chance to write a thesis, and 2 years to learn how to do so.  Sure there are books on research methods and databases of theses to form a background or starting place for your work, but no one really explains to us exactly what this process is like from start to finish.
2) Over the past year, I have learned beyond my expectations about the automotive industry, past, current, and future.  Throughout my next year of study, I have access to resources that would be coveted by any designer in this industry and plan to uncover valuable correlations between design and success.  I will post many images and articles which I find the most enriching.
and 3) Writing my thoughts and progress where it is publicly available will encourage me to meet deadlines and provide a clear platform to keep my committee informed.

My Topic
I will be examining the history of automotive bodycloth development and aligning this with outside factors such as the economy, increase in mass production, increase in technical standards and regulations, the importance of fashion and color, along with what at this time is an unpredictable number of additional variables.  The ultimate question I aim to answer is if there is a concrete way to measure and predict success in order to save time, money, and resources.

9.20.2009

Interviews are Complete! (almost)

I've driven over 200 miles in Michigan, 800 in California and over 2200 miles on the East Coast.
I've flown in a diamond from coast to coast and border to boarder across the US.
I've called Mexico, Australia and Korea (twice).
And I've sent thousands of emails to a hundred contacts across the world.

The outcome has been 31 interviews with 46 designers, engineers, sales experts and executives in the automotive textile industry from OEMs and all Tiers.

One of the main reasons I chose this very non-traditional route of gathering information is the same as my reason for choosing this topic: very little has been published regarding automotive textiles and the history of the industry.  We found it necessary that I gather information straight from the source.  I'd like to thank all these industry professionals for sharing their time and historical knowledge with me for this study.  

I'd also like to give credit to the few books that I have found extremely useful and I suggest that if you are interested in this subject, that you refer to these as well:
"Textile Advances in the Automotive Industry"- Edited by Shishoo
"Engineering Textiles: Integrating the Design and Manufacture of Textile Products" - YE ElMogahzy
"Textiles in Automotive Engineering"- Fung and Hardcastle
"Automotive Interior Trim" - Michael Ravnitzky
"Automotive Textiles" - Adrian Wilson
"The Automotive Industry Since 1945" - Lawrence White
"The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry" - Brock Yates
"The End of Detroit: How the Big Three lost their grip on the American car market" - Michieline Maynard

The first three books listed were made available by the Textile Institute.  These and the two listed after are the ONLY publications we've come across in English that speak in detail about automotive textiles: materials, structures, specifications, and the supply chain.  
The final three listed have each addressed the same issue, the fall of Detroit, but were published decades apart (1971, 1983, 2003).  And note that none of these have discussed the current crisis.  Although these text didn't speak about automotive textiles...well...at all, they provided the perfect background for understanding the cycles within the industry and getting "the big picture".  


Combine these 8 texts with the quantity and caliber of interviews conducted and I should have all the ingredients for a successful paper.  But a baker can't just throw everything in 1 pot and hope for cake.  Its time to enter the test kitchen with the goal of finding the prefect recipe for the red velvet of maters' theses.  


Oh yeah...and the countdown: 1 MONTH until the full first draft is due!
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