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Fabric Utilization Cut Order Planning

by stitchdiary July 5, 2013 0 Comments


Reference: http://stitchdiary.com/fabric-utilization-cut-order-planning/

Published in June 2013 issue of StichWorld Magazine Technology and Management in sewn
product industry.
Fabric is the single biggest cost driver for the garment industry. It ranges from 50% to 80% of the
garment cost. Thus, even a small fabric saving of 2% can add millions of dollars to a garment
manufacturers pockets.
In this series of articles Mausmi Ambastha, an entrepreneur providing IT solutions for the apparel
industry and Founder & Director of IntelloCut, with years of experience as a consultant and a former
faculty at NIFT discusses various concepts and tools used in the industry to improve fabric utilization
at various stages of production. These concepts help to make informed decisions and save fabric,
labor and time by following the principles of Buy what you need and Use what you have.
Cut Order Planning
One of the most crucial activities that take place in cutting room is Cut Order Plan. This activity is
also termed as lay plan, cut plan, lay lot plan, etc. Cut Order Plan is basically optimizing the
cutting process under certain constraints by following certain parameters. Dr Prabir Jana clearly
defines cut order plan in his article Cut Order Planning The Dot Com Way published in July, 2008
in Stitchworld magazine.
In a nutshell, cut order planning is deciding the combination of markers and lays for a particular
order. This is a standard process done in every factory. However, this simple decision has a huge
impact on overall saving for the order. This article elaborates on the above and explains the
important aspects of cut order planning. The objective of a good cut-plan should be to minimize
overall costs. The major costs involved in the cutting room are
1. Fabric cost
2. Marker making cost
3. Spreading cost
4. Cutting cost
5. Bundling cost
Fabric Cost: Fabric is the biggest chunk of the cost and has 50% -70% share in the overall garment
cost and total labor cost is a mere (10% to 15%) Out of which just cutting room labor would be a
much smaller fraction. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on reducing fabric cost in most cases.
Marker making cost: With the advent of CAD systems and automatic marker making systems, this
task has become quicker and much more efficient. Marker making costs have gone down.
Spreading Cost: This depends on the following parameters
Total fabric laid: Every meter has to be laid by a layer man, or layering team or machine.
Number of plies: Each new ply adds to the cost of pulling, laying, cutting or turning the fabric across
the lay.
Number of lays: Each new lay adds to the cost of preparation of the lay, sticking brown paper or
tissue, marking on the table, splice marks , laying the marker on top etc
No of roll changes: Each roll change adds the overhead of loading a roll.
Cutting Cost: This is dependent on number of bodies to be cut.
Bundling Cost: This depends on order quantity, size of bundles, number of parts etc. Cut order plan
does not have any major impact on bundling.
Analysing the above costs the fabric cost is the most dominant one and it is the first priority of the
Cut order plan.
How does Cut order plan save fabric?
On a lay the fabric used is defined as following:

In order to minimize fabric we have to reduce all three parameters of marker length, end loss and
plies for the overall order.
1. Marker Length This concept is well understood in the industry that a higher efficiency marker
results in better savings. However if we make only one or two high-efficiency markers and overlook
the remnant and smaller markers the benefit diminishes.
The important thing is to focus on the overall order instead of individual markers.
The reduction of marker length for overall order can be calculated by following parameters.
a. Lay consumption is a practical and better indicator of overall consumption for the order as it takes
into account the influence of all the markers over the order in terms of plies.

A popular measure used in factories is marked consumption. However, it only tells the about the
quality of markers and ignores their impact on the order

Example: An order ABC has following quantity

The cut plan for the above order was made as follows.

Marked Consumption = sum of marker lengths / bodies marked = 9.76 / 8 = 1.220 meters
Lay consumption = (sum of marker lengths X plies)/ pieces cut = 48.36 / 40 = 1.209 meters
The actual usage of fabric will happen based on lay consumption numbers. Therefore this number
should be used for calculation purposes for fabric requirement.
b. Weighted efficiency: The efficiency of the markers is an important indicator for the quality of
markers. To estimate the quality of markers across the order, weighted efficiency metric should be
used. This tells us the efficiency of the markers over the whole order weighed according to its
number of pieces.

Dr Prabir Jana in his article Cut Order Planning The Dot Com Way published in July, 2008 in
Stitchworld magazine states that Marker efficiency, a subset of Cut Order Planning, is much hyped,
as it is easily quantifiable in terms of percentage of fabric consumption. It is the weighted efficiency
of the overall order that should become our major point of concern.
Example: An order ABC has following quantity

The cut plan for the above order was made as follows.

Weighted Efficiency = sum of (efficiency X pieces) / Total Pieces = 3066.76 / 40 = 76.67%
Marker Length can affect saving in following ways
Marker should have the maximum number of pieces allowed in a marker wherever possible. More
pieces mixed in a marker generally results in higher efficiency and hence fabric saving.
Marker should have an even mix of smaller and larger sizes to get higher efficiency. This will in turn
deliver higher fabric saving.
Longer markers will also result in lesser number of markers in an order thereby reducing marker
making costs.
2. End loss This parameter can be controlled by following practices.
a. A lesser number of plies in the order will result in less wastage in end loss.
b. A proper control on the production floor will help reduce end loss
c. The end loss can be reduced by combining lays to make longer spreads.
This loss however is unavoidable to a certain extent but it certainly can be reduced. This topic is
beyond the scope of this article would be discussed separately.
3. Plies This is a very important factor which is often ignored while trying to get the right mix ratio
of the order. Lets see the impact of number of plies with a simple case.
Say, marker length = 10 meters,
Cuttable width = 1 meter
Marker efficiency = 80%
Total ply area = 10m X 1m = 10 square meters
Fabric area utilized in garments = efficiency * ply area = 0.80 X 10 = 8 square meters
Wastage per ply = 10 8 = 2 square meters
This means that 8 square meters of the marker will be actually used for cutting garments and 2
square meters will be wasted within the marker. Every additional ply put on this marker will result in
wastage of 2 square meters of fabric and some end loss as well.
It is clear that the higher the plies go, the wastage increases.
Therefore, to save fabric and avoid the above wastage, the number of plies should be as close to the
ideal plies as possible.
There is a simple formula that explains the calculation of ideal plies for an order. Ideal plies is the
least number of plies which is required to cut the whole order under the present constraints.

Example: An order ABC has following quantity

The marker maker can put maximum 2 pieces in a marker.
Ideal Plies = Order quantity / max pieces allowed in marker = 40 / 2= 20
Therefore, a cutplan with 20 plies should be the ideal solution.
It is always possible to create a cutplan with ideal plies for any order quantity or ratio. It is a matter of
doing tedious calculation and trying all possible solutions. As the order quantity and ratios increase it
becomes more and more difficult to arrive at the ideal plies. For the simple example as above there
can be more than 10000 possible solutions. A good software should be able to do these calculations
and arrive at the best possible solution.
The number of plies can affect saving in various ways.
Wastage in Markers: Every additional ply put on the markers will result in wastage of fabric within
the marker owing to its efficiency and some end loss as well. The number of plies should not vary
largely from the ideal plies for better fabric saving.
Each additional ply results in higher spreading cost as well.
The number of plies actually used will increase slightly from ideal numbers due to remnant markers.
However, a factory can always monitor the variance percentage from ideal plies.
A good cut order plan should have following characteristics.
1. It should use ideal number of plies and only increase some of the plies owing to remnant markers.
2. It should have most markers as long markers with maximum number of pieces allowed in a
marker. The markers should have a good mix of smaller and larger sizes. The smaller markers
should be made only in the case of remnant markers.
If the above two objectives are met, the cutplan will result in a lower lay consumption and higher
weighted efficiency, reducing overall cost of the order.
Two cutplans can be compared based on number of plies, lay consumption and weighted efficiency
to determine which one is a better solution.
Example:
Example: An order ABC has following quantity

Ideal Plies = 40/2 = 20 plies.
Two cut plans were made for the above order as follows:



Both the solutions shown above look equally plausible and correct. However, on close examination
of numbers we can clearly state that the second case is a much better solution for reducing overall
cost of the order.
A survey Excellence in Global Sourcing conducted by Kurt Salmon in 2012 highlights that Raw
materials management is one of the three most important areas where firms worldwide are focusing
their cost reduction efforts. Fabric being the major raw material is an important area of cost reduction
efforts and cut order plan is one of the tools which if properly used can result in major cost savings

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