Week 2
By: Rui Wang
Tags: Manufacturing

After the first week, I become much more familiar with Glen Raven’s environment. I can remember a lot of coworkers’ name on the floor.

The second week is a tight and busy week for me. A lot of travels, meetings, and works. I first worked out a way to play around with the touch sense fabric. I can use it as an input for electronic projects.

On Tuesday, comes an exciting trip to Anderson Plant with all the interns. We met each other in the morning then we drive to Anderson with Diana and Jamie. A lot of talks on the car made us know each other better, most of them are local people or study at Elon University, so it’s very fancy to hear people talk about things around. And they are very nice and easygoing. We ate dinner at Greensville, and we arrived at the hotel at Anderson at night. I slept very quick after 4-hour-drive.

The next day, we went straight to the Anderson Plant; this is the place where Sunbrella was made. The two managers accept us, and they introduced their experience here over the years and a general description of what’s going on here. Then he led us into the plant. We walk through all the manufacture line from the raw material to the end fabric. Several points really leave me a deep impression.

Sunbrella doesn’t buy yarns from other suppliers, because they want to get full control of their product, from the start to end, if they’re going to change the way they produce, they can call begin or stop from the very beginning. To guarantee the fabric’s color, they managed to control that also from the beginning, different shades of the raw material are processed in their only closed room, so that’s why Sumbrella won’t fade over a very long time cause they got no way to decay. The whole process from raw material to yarns take seven days to finish; it is a lot cost comparing to buy yarns from others. However, Sunbrella spares no efforts to do this; just want the best quality. The whole process is tranquil, and it’s different from what I imagined a factory should be. And machines and workers are running orderly. I can get a strong feeling of Machine Aesthetic. Sunbrella cares both their works’ mental and physical health, and they built a gym inside the plant, which makes them the easiest to access. They built a long track around the forest, and I feel a deep relaxation after I walked out of the plant and see those greens across the small river.

Anyway, it’s one of my most valuable trips, I see a lot, and I learn a lot.

I had two calls meeting on Wednesday with Paige and Andrew; it’s a long conversation, my first video call in a company.

Lauran showed me all the materials in the fabric gallery where I need to spend a lot of time here to study, and introduce me to all the branches in Glen Raven.

On Friday, we went to the First Friday trip to Raleigh, NCMA is our first stop, it has been a time that I didn’t visit a museum, so I was then attracted by those Italian Paintings, especially looking at people’s facial expression, it helps me to cool down inside and let my mind wanding somewhere. After that, we dropped two more art museums, and it’s a lot of fun. Finally, we had a lovely drink time at a bar, and it’s a great relax for this whole week.

This week is tight but unforgettable.