ANDERS PERSSON
VINCENT NIERSTRASZ
FOREWORD
This handbook is intended to help students complete their Masters thesis work in
Textile Engineering at the Swedish School of Textiles. In electronic format (a Microsoft Word document) it also provides a general template, in which the heading
of this section (Foreword) could be replaced by the students Abstract. The handbook outlines the thesis process, including important dates, and it explains the departments requirements on format and writing as well as the grading system, supervision and other important parts of the thesis process.
This handbook is based on its equivalent developed by Jonas Stray and Hkan Torstensson for the Applied Textile Management Programme, which is also offered at
the Swedish School of Textiles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword .................................................................................................................... i
Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... iii
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1
2. Topic and Project................................................................................................ 1
3. Thesis Project Overview..................................................................................... 1
4. Registration ........................................................................................................ 3
5. Project proposal .................................................................................................. 3
6. Supervision ......................................................................................................... 4
7. Thesis Report Structure ...................................................................................... 4
8. Format and Writing Requirements ..................................................................... 6
Format Requirements ............................................................................................ 6
Page Size and Margins ...................................................................................... 6
Font ................................................................................................................... 6
Headings and Table of Contents ....................................................................... 6
Lists of Figures, Tables, Acronyms and Abbreviations .................................... 7
Figures, tables and other floating environments ............................................... 7
Footnotes........................................................................................................... 7
References......................................................................................................... 7
Writing Requirements ......................................................................................... 10
9. Start up and mid-term presentations ................................................................. 10
10. Oral Presentation and Opposition ..................................................................... 11
11. Evaluation and Examination............................................................................. 11
Appendix I. ............................................................................................................. 13
Appendix II. ............................................................................................................ 15
Appendix III............................................................................................................ 17
iii
1. INTRODUCTION
The Swedish School of Textiles has one Masters Programme in Textile Engineering, which is scheduled for two years with a one semester full time thesis project,
i.e. 30 credits. This programme also offers a possibility to settle for one year where
the student makes half a semester thesis project, i.e. 15 credits. There are two different handbooks that cover the thesis courses individually. The thesis projects
require independent scientific work, academic writing and oral presentation at an
international level. As students are expected to produce reports and presentations
of a quality level set by the international peer-review principles, it is useful to have
a manual that outlines the administrative process and thesis project flow, describes
the report format requirements and the student-supervisor relationship, provides
language guidelines and explains the grading system and process. This manual is
intended to assist the student in completing the project on time and in designing
and writing up the outcome of his or her work according to the set standards.
OK
NOT OK
Assess
ment
NOT OK
Fx
Opposition
Presentation
11/6
Submission
Revised
3/6
Submission
final version
29/5 PM
29/5 AM
NOT OK
OK
27/5
Assessment
by supervisor
August r
Presentation
OK
Assess
ment
7/6
Half time
seminar
Start up
seminar
Clearance by
examiner & course
manager
25/3
24/1
14/12-12
9/11-12
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
A student that fails to deliver a manuscript by 23 May or is stopped from presentation in the 29 May seminar is handled individually. Still the student should be prepared for the peer review part 29 May. Next available opportunity for presentation
is in August 2013.
4. REGISTRATION
In order to register for the 30-credit thesis project (from now on just thesis), the
student must have earned at least 52.5 credits and 7.5 credits from the course Scientific Methodology and Communication under the programme in LADOK by the
end of week 4.
The registration form is included in Appendix I of this document. It may be filled
in electronically and emailed to the thesis coordinator.
5. PROJECT PROPOSAL
The project proposal should be handed to your designated supervisor, or the thesis
coordinator if you have not been assigned a supervisor. It should outline the things
you intend to do during your project and when you plan on doing them. This type
of document is common when communicating research projects for interested parties to understand what activities are needed and how long they will take in order
for the project to be successful. Use Gantt charts or other illustration tools according to your own judgement. A sample proposal is given in Appendix III.
6. SUPERVISION
The role of the supervisor is to help the student complete the project on time and to
produce a report of high quality. The student and supervisor first agree on a timeline for the project, and adherence to this timeline becomes part of the final grade.
The student and supervisor should meet or talk directly several times over the
course of the project. The student should submit written work several times as well,
especially while working on the problem description. Each student are entitled to at
least twelve hours of direct communication with their supervisor and the supervisor
has the right to the same amount, upon failure on part of the supervisor up until two
weeks before the deadline to hand in the report the student is entitled to be assigned
another supervisor. Upon failure on part of the students up until two weeks before
the deadline to hand in the report the supervisor has the right to disallow examination. In order for this right to disallow examination to come into effect, there must
be evidence of written requests (letters or electronic mail) for direct communication sessions from the supervisor detailing the time and form of these sessions.
Furthermore, under the same consequences as described in the case of direct communication, the students have the right to adequate supervision in terms of the contents of the report and the supervisor has the right to a printed, or, in the case of
long geographical distances between the student and supervisor, electronic, copy of
the report within two weeks notice as the report stands at any moment during the
thesis project. The total supervision time available for each student is 30 hours
including reading time.
The supervisor should make sure that the student is fully aware of the requirements
to get the thesis accepted for presentation. If this issue arises the course management should be noticed asap.
Ping-pong should be used for communication.
Introduction Introduce the topic and make the reader interested. Important concepts may be briefly introduced and should be maintained exactly throughout the
document.
Problem description describe your problem in as much detail as you possibly
can. Tell us why it is an important problem; tell us how solving it may change the
world. Every term you use not described in the dictionary must be properly defined
or referenced. If it is used several times in your document it can be helpful if you
place a referenced definition in a footnote.
Research questions if you are not tackling a specific problem it might make
sense to outline your goals by means of a research question or more. The question
should guide your research and can be more or less specific, but the answer you
provide must rest on your method, results and on the literature review. It is important to discuss the research questions with the supervisor.
Literature review explore the literature to convince the reader that you have
read everything that may actually contain a solution to your problem, but does not.
Refer to the literature for definitions of concepts that you have not invented yourself. Do not include several paragraphs describing common knowledge or even
cutting-edge research unless you are describing the method that you used.
Theoretical frame of reference this is more or less the same as a literature review and is more often used in doctoral dissertations. It should constitute a set of
ideas that you want the reader to presuppose when interpreting your work. It
should also contain a number of definitions of concepts that might otherwise be
interpreted in a vastly different way than you would like. These definitions and
ideas should mostly be based (if not all) on accepted literature in the research field
of your thesis.
Method describe your method in such a way as to make it possible to repeat your
work. If you have developed a new method, you must provide reliability and validity tests and discussions. If it is a well-known, accepted scientific method, find a
good book or paper that describes the method properly and follow the method to
the letter. Reference the book or paper you use and describe what you did, dont
repeat the text of the book or paper. If you suspect that your choice of method
might be questioned, provide a discussion on each of the alternative methods that
conceivably might have been applied to solve your problem, and end this with a
motivation for your particular choice. This is not always relevant; in the case of
mathematics, for example, if you have proven a solution to a problem, the way you
did it might not matter as long as it holds.
Results this section or chapter usually contains tables and graphs depicting the
numerical or other output produced by your method. Present the results in welldesigned graphs and carefully described tables so that they may actually be read
and understood without having to read the next section or chapter.
Analysis complicated result may require further analysis to become useful
knowledge. Use this section to interpret graphs, explaining to the reader what they
are telling us. As an example, in the results section a table might contain the values
12, 15, 18 and 21 under the headings January, February, March and April, respectively. In the analysis section you might want to say The value increased by 3
units per month over a four-month period. In the analysis section, you should
draw on the literature review and weave it together with your results and come up
with an answer to your problem.
Conclusions here you simply state the solution to your problem and perhaps say
something about its implications on the rest of us.
Future research during your project you should collect the ideas that cant be
investigated and write them up in a future research section. This may be of benefit
to other people or yourself for future research projects.
FORMAT REQUIREMENTS
The report must contain a title page, abstract, table of contents, list of figures, list
of tables, list of abbreviations, list of acronyms, the main document, references and
appendix. The list of figures, list of tables and appendix are necessary only if there
are respective figures, tables or material suitable for inclusion in an appendix in the
report.
FONT
There may generally only be a single font (Times New Roman, Arial etc.) in the
document. The only exception is that you may use a serif font in the text while
using a sans serif in the headings. The font size of the main text should be 11 or 12
(never mixed). Headings should be larger than 11 or 12, but must be the same for
the same heading level across the document. Never use fantasy fonts.
The table of contents should contain headings down to at least the third level.
FOOTNOTES
In scientific texts it is occasionally good for the readability to refrain from clarifying terms directly in the text. As an example, consider the flow of the following
sentence: the subjects all had to have prior experience of asphyxiation, which
is defined here as the subject having being deprived of oxygen during a neardrowning experience, which entailed a large search and recruitment effort before
the study could start. In this case the word asphyxiation1 is given a slightly more
precise definition than that found in dictionaries, and the flow would have been
improved if this definition had been placed in a footnote. It is, however, sometimes
crucial to present the definition directly in the text, so exercise judgement when
using footnotes.
REFERENCES
References play an important role in scientific texts. By referencing clearly and
unambiguously, the reader can determine who says what, when they said it and
where the source of each fact or statement is located. The quality of the research
presented in the text is dependent on the extent and range of the body of literature
and other sources that have been used in supporting the background, problem formulation, frame of reference, methods, results, analysis, conclusions and future
work. The referencing has to be clear and provide enough information to identify
the sources precisely. Primary sources should be used if available.
If the source has a single author, include the surname of the author, if there are two
authors, include both authors surnames separated by the word and. If there are
three authors or more, use the surname of the first author followed by et al. (an
abbreviation of the Latin expression et alia, meaning with others).
The following sentence exemplifies the reference rules and how to write more than
one reference for each statement: Smith and Johnson (1977), Tomlinson et al.
(1978) and Bergerand (1980) showed that books become larger by adding words,
while current research indicates that the number of words decreases as more work
is put into writing the text (Cobbleberg et al., 2011) and that the length and complexity of words also decreases with effort (Ardent and Dumanoir, 2009; Steinbeard, 2010).
When referencing or quoting a specific claim in the source, indicate this by including the page numbers: Ardent and Dumanoir (2011, pp. 23-24) argue that nothing
can substitute a well chosen word. You could alternatively write this in your own
words: The authors argue that the criteria for a judging whether a word has been
well chosen is that it is hard to replace the word with a better word (Ardent and
Dumanoir, 2009, pp. 23-24).
If a quote is longer than 50 words, place it in an indented paragraph, with quotation
marks: Hardy (1882, p. 330) tells us
There were so many lions around us that we could
have walked on their backs across the river, if only they
had been of a more benign species and had been standing in the river. As it was, their benevolence was limited to ignoring us, for which we thanked them, so we
quietly waded across.
Perhaps you are wondering about the usage and placement of quotation marks,
commas and full stops (.)? Put the full stops and commas inside the quotation
marks when they are part of the word or quote you are referring to. Put the commas
and full stops outside of the quotation marks when they are not part of the word or
quote (this is called logical punctuation as opposed to aesthetic punctuation). Use
single quotation marks () as inner quotation delimiters.
If a statement refers to several works of the same author, include the author name
once, followed by a list of the years of publication: Direct use: Cobbleberg (2010;
2011) and indirect use: (Cobbleberg, 2010; 2011). If the works were published
in the same year, use a, b, , etc. to distinguish them: Smith (1974a; b) was first
contradicted by Tomlinson (1980a), but Tomlinson (1980b) later retracted the contradiction.
Compilations of work by several authors, such as encyclopaedias, usually name the
editor or publishing company of the compiled work. The reference to work in such
a compilation should be specified by using the author of the work, not the editor of
the compilation. Reference to the compilation as a whole should be specified by
the name of the editor.
References to work by organisations is similar to that of authors but if the organisation is mentioned more than once, an acronym should be introduced: The Swedish
Royal Book Preservation Society (SRBPS) has performed research on the size of
books and conclude that books are getting shorter (SRBPS, 2009). If the organisation is well known by an acronym, use that one: SIDA (2010) states
If you cant establish the name of the author (which should always be done), use
Anonymous or Anon. instead of the name: Books are good (Anon., 2010).
If the year of publication cannot be established, use n.d. (no date): (Tomlinson,
n.d.).
WRITING REQUIREMENTS
The examiner will grade your writing style and language. The report should be
written in American or British English, not a mix of the two. Try to write in active
form, but be clear about the usage of I and we. The authors of this handbook
recommend using the author(s) instead of I or we. There are numerous language and style guides available, and it is a good idea to select a guide for writers
of research papers, dissertations, theses or reports, or combinations thereof, and to
follow the rules laid out in the style guide carefully.
As far as formal requirements are concerned, sentences must be complete, unambiguous and devoid of slang or expressions. Should this not be the case, the report
may be returned to you before grading (format disapproval).
10
where they are in their project and it becomes much clearer where they are heading. Hence, the 30 credit thesis project includes two such presentations.
It is compulsory for peers to attend and it is strongly recommended that supervisors, examiners and thesis coordinators attend.
During the start-up seminar the students put their research question and scope into
context and also present draft outlines of methods and time plan. The time limit is
10 minutes, plus an additional 5 minutes for discussion.
At the mid-term seminar the students should make sure that relevant literature is
digested, further work is planned in detail and the validity of the research question
has become reinforced or modified. The time limit is 15 minutes, plus an additional
5 minutes for discussion.
10.
11.
Examiner and supervisor are assigned during mid-December. The examiner examines the report between the submission date and the oral presentation and opposition date, and is present at the oral presentation and opposition. After all of the
presentations for the day are completed, there is a short recess and the student
teams are then called back and given their grade reports.
The thesis will be assessed according to the ECTS grade scale. A is given for excellent work, B is given for very good work, C is given for good work, D is given
for satisfactory work and E is given for sufficient work. Even though the examiner
considers the work to be of A, B, C, D or E quality, the work may contain formatting errors. This is reflected by an incomplete grade report (an example of the
grade report is included in Appendix II) with the tick-box labelled No ticked
under Thesis format approved. The grade Fx is given when the thesis is insufficient, but a better grade can be achieved by resubmitting a corrected report. The
grade F cannot be improved by resubmitting, the student has to register for the
thesis again and start over.
11
12
Appendix I.
13
REGISTRATION TT THESIS
Filled in by the student and emailed to thesis coordinator:
Project title
Short description
Report number
Student name
Programme
E-mail
Proposed project starting date
Affiliation
Name of company, organization
Company supervisor
Address
Phone, fax, e-mail
14
Appendix II.
15
Number
Supervisor approved
Yes
No
Thesis received date
Signature
Grade/signature
16
Remark
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
7
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
7
7
6
6
5
5
Score
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
3
3
2
2
1
1
Appendix III.
Wet-to-dry Initiative: E-Mass Customization reflected from a Sustainable
Point of View
This master thesis is a part of an initiative at the Swedish School of Textiles that
aims to develop and test applications within mass customization businesses for
digital printing on textiles. The initiative is interdisciplinary between design, technology, business and supply chain management.
Theoretical assumptions
Since recent years mass customization is a widely used paradigm in the textile
industry which offers several opportunities, like coming closer to customers
needs, withstand market volatility and being able to gain economies of scope
through a different manufacturing approach compared to mass production. Hence,
it becomes more and more attractive for unique start-ups to apply this efficient and
effective strategy. Since nowadays corporations cannot any longer sustain a competitive advantage with a one-sided view on the economic development, a new
paradigm-shift is constantly being discussed by academia and entrepreneurs. These
debates include social and ecological aspects into business reality to foster a triple
bottom line approach; consisting of people, planet, profit that sets the foundation
for a sustainable development in future.
Choice of topic
The wettodry initiative provides a vision for a cleaner future that encompasses the
evolution of digital clothing supply chains, from design to distribution and an endof-life supply chain focus. It is aimed to minimize returns and in turn reduce waste.
This web-based supply chain is the new approach to realize a more sustainable and
efficient apparel industry and global trade by focusing on e-configurations, digital
design and manufacturing toolkits, online dressing facilities and the development
of a virtual shopping market. Different types of waste can be controlled as part of a
lean manufacturing within an agile chain, or sustainable project. Also technology
plays a role in developing a more sustainable supply chain including computerized
sketching, CAD pattern design, digital grading and marker-making, digital direct
on textile printing and computer numerical control (CAM) single-ply cutting.
Objectives and goals
The objective of this master thesis is to reflect e-mass customization from a sustainable perspective. Although sustainability always covers the three aspects of
people-planet-profit, this thesis highlights only the ecological and economical relevancies that are crystallized from this business strategy. Moreover, it will be analysed how far the integration of a digital textile printing machine contributes to a
more ecological aspiration for the textile industry, besides focusing only on the
economic outcomes by increasing profit margins.
Key topics: Mass customization, Longtail economy, e-commerce, Sustainability,
digital textile printer, digital supply chain network, supply and demand chain management
17
economy in business leads to a win-win situation for companies, the society and
the eco-system; simply for everybody taking part in the supply chain. Moreover, it
will be expected that the best realization potentials for this approach lie within
mass customization concepts. Consequently, this thesis is of great relevance for
any textile and fashion corporation that is already involved in customizing products
to individual needs, or wants to change its current business strategy and processes
in a more sustainable and profitable manner in order to maintain a competitive
advantage in future. Also, it aims to point out the flexibility of a digital supply
chain management reinforced through a digital printing machine that eases cost,
location and risk advantages.
Time and work plan
12.316.3
19.323.3
26.330.3
2.46.4
9.413.4
16.420.4
23.427.4
30.44.5
7.511.5
14.
518.
5
21.525.5
Lecture Art
of Business
Trying to
contact
companies
and experts
of interest
Proposal
Research
Introduction
Methodology
Theoretical
Framework /
Literature
Review
Practical
Framework
Analysis
Discussion
Conclusion
Further
Research
Proofreading
Preparation
for Presentation
19
29.5
Opposition
Final Presentation &
Celebration
20