An order's purchase order, tech pack and costing sheet are not three unrelated documents. They describe the same 15,000 pieces from three angles: the purchase order states the commercial terms, the tech pack states the product specification, and the costing sheet states how the price was built. A merchandiser who treats them as three separate filing jobs will miss the moment a change in one makes the other two wrong. This lesson mainly teaches the information flow: how a change should move from the document it starts in to the other two, and what goes wrong when nobody checks. By the end, you can look at a change to any one of the three documents and say, correctly, which of the other two it should be checked against.
You need: the purchase order from lesson 4.1, the tech pack from lesson 8.2, and the costing sheet from lesson 7.1.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: how a purchase order's own fields are checked for completeness (lesson 5.3), how the costing sheet's fabric line is built (lesson 7.1), and how information failures compound across a whole order (lesson 9.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Purchase order | A document from a buyer confirming quantity, price and delivery date, which commits the buyer to pay for the goods it orders. |
| Tech pack | A document that specifies exactly what a garment is: measurements, fabric, trims, construction and artwork, that a factory produces against. |
| Costing sheet | The document that lists a garment's cost components and adds them to the price the factory quotes. |
| FOB price | The price the factory charges for the garment, delivered on board the ship at its own port. |
| Fabric cost | The cost of the fabric used in one garment, driven by fabric price per kilogram and consumption per piece. |
| Specification reference | A named or numbered tech pack or approved specification a purchase order points to, so both sides agree exactly what is being made. |
| Ripple effect | The way a genuine change in one document should flow through and be checked against the other documents built on it. |
| Single point of truth | The idea that, for any one fact about an order, there is one document that is correct, and every other copy of that fact should match it. |
The purchase order states the commercial terms: quantity, price, delivery date. The tech pack states the product specification: what the garment actually is. The costing sheet states the price build-up: how the FOB price was worked out from its parts. These are not three independent facts. The costing sheet's fabric line is built on the exact fabric the tech pack specifies. The purchase order's price is built on that costing sheet. Change any one of the three, and the link that was true when the order was confirmed may no longer hold, unless someone checks it.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| A quantity change on the purchase order | A buyer raises or lowers the ordered quantity after the order is confirmed. | The per-piece price on the costing sheet may no longer hold at the new quantity, and the tech pack's fabric consumption figure, and any marker efficiency it assumes, may need rechecking at the new volume. |
| A fabric change in the tech pack | A different fibre, yarn count or fabric weight is specified after the purchase order is signed. | The costing sheet's fabric line was built on the old fabric price; it is now wrong until it is rebuilt, and the purchase order's price field may need renegotiating once the new cost is known. |
| A cost change on the costing sheet | A fabric price rise, a trims price change, or a labour cost increase changes one line of the costing sheet. | The purchase order's agreed price should be checked: is the factory absorbing the change, or does the price need renegotiating with the buyer? |
| No document is checked at all | A change is made in one document and nobody checks it against the other two, whether the order is a domestic Make to Stock reorder or an export Make to Order shipment. | Without a formal system connecting all three, each document can silently go out of date relative to the others, and production can continue against a specification, cost or price that no longer matches reality. |
Every one of these shapes needs the same response: identify what changed, and check it against the documents built on it, not only the document it happened to change in.
The case we followOrder A's tech pack specifies Ne 30/1 combed cotton at 180 GSM. Delta Garments' costing sheet's fabric line, USD 1.15, is built on that exact fabric. Northline Apparel's purchase order FOB price, USD 3.20, is built on that costing sheet. All three documents currently agree with each other, because each one was built on the one before it. If the tech pack's fabric specification changed to a heavier GSM, the costing sheet's fabric line and the purchase order's price would both need updating: a change starting in one document, correctly traced through the other two.
| Document | States | Built on |
|---|---|---|
| Tech pack | Ne 30/1 combed cotton, 180 GSM | The design department's specification |
| Costing sheet | Fabric cost USD 1.15 per piece | The tech pack's exact fabric |
| Purchase order | FOB price USD 3.20 | The costing sheet's price build-up |
This is a hypothetical for this lesson, not a fixed master figure: illustrating the ripple effect using Order A's own figures, if a heavier fabric raised the fabric cost from USD 1.15 to, say, USD 1.30 per piece, the FOB price would need to rise by the same amount to keep the same profit.
A common mistake is to assume a change made in one document, say the tech pack, is someone else's problem to propagate to the others. Without a clear owner for checking all three, a fabric change can sit updated in the tech pack for weeks while the costing sheet and purchase order still reflect the old fabric, exactly the kind of information failure lesson 9.4 develops further. The tech pack looks correct in isolation; so does the costing sheet; so does the purchase order. None of the three people who last touched them may realise the three documents no longer agree with each other.
A purchase order, a tech pack and a costing sheet describe the same order from three different angles: the commercial terms, the product, and how the price was built. They are meant to always agree with each other. A quantity change on the purchase order can affect the costing sheet's per-piece price and the tech pack's fabric use. A fabric change in the tech pack can affect the costing sheet's fabric line and the purchase order's price. A cost change on the costing sheet can affect whether the purchase order's price still holds. Whenever a genuine change happens in one of the three, check it against the other two before you assume nothing else needs to change. If nobody owns that check, one document can quietly go out of date while the others look fine.
Facts:
Does the factory's existing purchase order and costing sheet still apply once the tech pack changes? Decide before you open the answer.
No, they do not still apply as they stand. The costing sheet was built on the original, lighter fabric named in tech pack revision 1. A heavier fabric changes the fabric cost, because more fabric weight per piece means a higher fabric cost per piece, which should flow through to a revised costing sheet and, potentially, a renegotiated purchase order price.
Two facts decide this together: the tech pack revision changed the specification the costing sheet was built on, and the purchase order's price was itself built on that now-outdated costing sheet. Continuing to produce against the old purchase order price while using the new, heavier fabric specification would leave Delta Garments absorbing an unplanned cost increase it never agreed to.
The method's steps apply directly here: the change originated in the tech pack; it has a specification impact (the fabric); it has a cost impact (the costing sheet's fabric line); and it has a commercial-terms impact (the purchase order's price). All three documents need checking, not just the tech pack that was actually edited.
Using the illustrative figures from the worked number above: if Delta Garments continued at the old USD 3.20 FOB price despite an unrevised fabric cost rise to USD 1.30 from USD 1.15, it would silently lose USD 0.15 per piece across the whole 15,000-piece order.
That USD 2,250 is money the factory never planned to lose, entirely because a specification change was never traced through to the costing sheet and the purchase order. Against Order A's total order value of 3.20 × 15,000 = USD 48,000, that unrevised change alone would erase a meaningful share of the whole order's profit margin.
The Information map sheet lists every order document, who creates it, who relies on it, and the risk if it is wrong. This lesson uses three of its rows.
| Document | Created by | Relied on by | Risk if wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tech pack / specification | Northline Apparel (design) | Delta Garments (production, quality) | Whole run may be re-cut or re-made |
| Purchase order (NA-2291) | Northline Apparel (buying office) | Delta Garments (merchandising) | Production should not start at all |
| Costing sheet | Delta Garments (merchandising) | Both companies' merchandising | A wrong line silently misprices the order |
When one row changes, use "Relied on by" to see who must be told, and check the other rows' "Risk if wrong" before assuming the change is contained.
1. Which three documents does this lesson trace connections between?
2. If a tech pack's fabric specification changes after a purchase order is signed, what should happen?
3. A 5,000-piece domestic order's costing sheet shows a trims cost rising by USD 0.08 per piece, unrevised in the purchase order price. What does that unrevised order lose in total?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase order | أمر الشراء (طلبية الشراء) | Bon de commande | Satın alma siparişi | A document from a buyer confirming quantity, price and delivery date, which commits the buyer to pay for the goods it orders. |
| Tech pack | حزمة المواصفات الفنية | Fiche technique | Teknik paket | A document that specifies exactly what a garment is: measurements, fabric, trims, construction and artwork, that a factory produces against. |
| Costing sheet | كشف التكلفة | Fiche de coûts | Maliyet tablosu | The document that lists a garment's cost components and adds them to the price the factory quotes. |
| FOB price | سعر التسليم على ظهر السفينة | Prix FOB | FOB fiyatı | The price the factory charges for the garment, delivered on board the ship at its own port. |
| Fabric cost | تكلفة القماش | Coût du tissu | Kumaş maliyeti | The cost of the fabric used in one garment, driven by fabric price per kilogram and consumption per piece. |
| Specification reference | مرجع المواصفة | Référence à la fiche technique | Spesifikasyon referansı | A named or numbered tech pack or approved specification a purchase order points to, so both sides agree exactly what is being made. |
| Ripple effect | أثر التتابع | Effet d'entraînement | Domino etkisi | The way a genuine change in one document should flow through and be checked against the other documents built on it. |
| Single point of truth | المرجع الوحيد الموثوق | Source unique de vérité | Tek doğru kaynağı | The idea that, for any one fact about an order, there is one document that is correct, and every other copy of that fact should match it. |
You now know how a change in one document should be traced through the other two. The next lesson looks at what happens when nobody does that tracing: wrong data, late updates, and version confusion. Back to the course map