A garment factory's departments are not just names on an organisation chart. They are stations a physical order passes through, one after another, on its way from raw fabric to a shipped carton. A person who does not know this fixed sequence cannot read a production plan, cannot spot a missing stage, and cannot tell a real delay from a stage that simply has not started yet.
This matters to a production planner scheduling a new style, a buyer's merchandiser checking on progress, or a new employee learning how the floor works. Delta Garments, the factory used throughout this lesson, makes Order A (15,000 basic cotton T-shirts) and Order B (3,000 five-pocket jeans); both are used here because they show the same fixed sequence, with one real difference between them.
Without this knowledge, a person assumes every order moves through the same stages in the same way, and never checks whether the order in front of them needs an extra one. This lesson gives you the fixed sequence and the method for checking any order's own route before you plan or read a schedule for it.
You need: nothing but this page. You do not need to have visited a factory before.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: how a sewing line balances its own operations (lesson 1.2), how to calculate a department's capacity (lesson 1.3), how to find a bottleneck once the sequence is known (lesson 1.4), and the organisation chart of who reports to whom (Track 1, Course 8).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Department | A team within a company responsible for one part of the business, such as production, quality or merchandising. |
| Stores | The department that receives and holds fabric and trims until they are needed, then issues them to the cutting room. |
| Cutting room | The area where bulk fabric is cut to the approved marker, the step between fabric arriving and sewing starting. |
| Quality assurance | The department that inspects work in progress and finished goods against the agreed quality standard, separate from the department that makes the goods. |
| Work-in-progress (WIP) | Pieces that have started production but are not yet finished goods, sitting between two stages of the factory's workflow. |
A garment factory's departments are not just an organisation chart; they are stations a physical order passes through in a fixed sequence. Fabric and trims arrive and are held in stores, are cut in the cutting room, are assembled on the sewing line, are checked by quality assurance, and are packed for shipment by finishing and packing. Each stage can only start once the stage before it has handed off completed work: the sewing line cannot sew pieces the cutting room has not yet cut, and finishing cannot pack pieces quality assurance has not yet checked.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the fabric sitting in stores | An export order for which the factory buys and holds its own fabric and trims (Order A's own shape), against a CMT export order for which the buyer supplies fabric and trims and stores only receives, checks and holds them. | Changes who pays for the material sitting in stores, but not the department sequence itself: stores still receives, holds and issues to cutting either way. |
| What triggers stores to release material to cutting | A single buyer's confirmed purchase order for an export order, against a Make to Stock forecast for a domestic order like Cedar & Co.'s own shape, which decides what stores holds and when cutting starts without waiting on one buyer. | The same five departments still apply; only the signal that starts the sequence changes. |
| Whether the route needs an extra stage | A knit order like Order A (a T-shirt) needs no stage beyond the standard five; a woven order like Order B (jeans) adds a washing stage, performed by Cairo Wash Works, between quality assurance and finishing. | Missing this extra stage means a schedule built for the order does not match what actually has to happen on the floor. |
| How stores and the cutting room are staffed | A small factory often runs stores and cutting as one team; a larger factory running several orders at once usually separates them into two departments. | Changes who to contact about a fabric delay versus a cutting delay, but the two handoffs (fabric to cutting, cutting to sewing) still happen in the same order. |
Delta Garments makes both Order A, Northline Apparel's 15,000 basic cotton T-shirts, and Order B, 3,000 five-pocket jeans in 12 oz denim. Both orders move through the same five department stations: stores receives the fabric and trims, the cutting room cuts it to the approved marker, the sewing line assembles the cut pieces into garments, quality assurance inspects the finished garments, and finishing and packing prepares them for shipment. Order B's own fixed detail specifies 2 washes for the jeans, so its route also passes through Cairo Wash Works, a garment-wash laundry serving Delta Garments, inserted between quality assurance and finishing. Order A's knit T-shirt needs no washing stage at all.
| Order | Route through Delta Garments |
|---|---|
| Order A (the T-shirt, a knit order) | Stores → cutting room → sewing line → quality assurance → finishing and packing |
| Order B (the jeans, a woven order) | Stores → cutting room → sewing line → quality assurance → Cairo Wash Works (2 washes) → finishing and packing |
Karim, the production manager, and the 600 sewing operators in production see both routes on the same factory floor at the same time: an Order A T-shirt can be sitting in finishing while an Order B pair of jeans is still on its way to Cairo Wash Works, even though both orders started in the same stores and the same cutting room.
The worked numberThis lesson's worked number is not a price but a count of stages: the standard sequence has five stations, and the jeans order's (Order B's) own fixed washing requirement inserts one more, making six for that specific order.
A common mistake is treating the standard stores-to-cutting-to-sewing-to-quality-to-finishing sequence as universal for every single order, without checking whether the specific order being scheduled, like the jeans order's (Order B's) 2 washes, inserts an extra stage. Missing this means the factory's own production plan and its worksheet do not actually match what happens on the floor: a schedule with no washing stage either skips a required process step, or the gap is only discovered once the goods reach finishing, both of which delay the order.
A garment factory is a set of stations an order passes through, one after another. Fabric arrives and is stored. It is cut. It is sewn into garments. The garments are checked. The garments are packed and shipped. Every station only starts its part once the station before it finishes and hands the work over. Most orders pass through the same five stations in the same order. Some orders need one extra station added partway through, because of something fixed about what that specific order requires, such as a garment that has to be washed after it is sewn and checked. Checking for that extra station before building a schedule is what keeps the plan matching what actually happens on the factory floor.
Karim, the production manager at Delta Garments, is briefing a new planner on the route of Order B, the jeans order, through the factory. The planner has only seen Order A's (the T-shirt's) workflow before.
The planner's draft schedule reads:
Should Karim approve the planner's draft schedule for Order B as it stands? Decide before opening the answer.
No. Order B's own fixed detail specifies 2 washes for the jeans, so its correct workflow inserts a washing stage, at Cairo Wash Works, between quality assurance and finishing, that Order A's route does not have.
First fact. Order B's own fixed "2 washes" detail is not optional; it is a requirement of the specific garment being made, a pair of jeans in 12 oz denim.
Second fact. Cairo Wash Works is fixed as the garment-wash laundry serving Delta Garments; washing a finished garment is not something the sewing line or quality assurance can do themselves.
A schedule missing this stage would either skip a required process step, or the gap would only be discovered once the goods reach finishing, when it is too late to slot washing in without delay. Karim should send the draft back with the washing stage added between quality assurance and finishing before approving it.
Framed as time, since this is a workflow lesson rather than a costing one: the jeans order's own fixed schedule of 22 weeks already allocates 3 weeks to washing. A schedule built without a washing stage would need to insert those 3 weeks somewhere after the missing stage is discovered, most likely pushing the fixed 22-week delivery date for Order B (the jeans) back by the length of the missed stage. The cost of the planner's mistake is not the washing itself, which was always going to take 3 weeks; it is the 3 weeks of delay added on top, because the stage was never scheduled for in the first place.
Open the Factory workflow and capacity worksheet. For the standard route, record each department in the "Stage / department" column in the order it appears — stores, cutting room, sewing line, quality assurance, finishing and packing — and fill the "Receives work from" column with the department immediately before it in the sequence. Where an order needs an extra stage, such as the jeans order's (Order B's) washing at Cairo Wash Works, add a row for it between the two departments it sits between, and note in the "Receives work from" column that it takes work from quality assurance and hands off to finishing and packing. Leave the target and actual output columns for lesson 1.3 and 1.4. Download link: `templates/T07-C01-factory-workflow-capacity-worksheet.xlsx`.
Download the Factory workflow and capacity worksheet (Excel)
1. In the standard five-stage department sequence, what does the sewing line receive its work from?
2. Which fixed fact about Order B means its factory route needs an extra stage that Order A's route does not?
3. A factory is planning a domestic Make to Stock order for Cedar & Co. Does the same five-department sequence still apply?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Department | القسم | Département | Departman | A team within a company responsible for one part of the business, such as production, quality or merchandising. |
| Stores | المخازن | Magasin (stock) | Depo | The department that receives and holds fabric and trims until they are needed, then issues them to the cutting room. |
| Cutting room | صالة القص | Salle de coupe | Kesim salonu | The area where bulk fabric is cut to the approved marker, the step between fabric arriving and sewing starting. |
| Quality assurance | ضمان الجودة | Assurance qualité | Kalite güvencesi | The department that inspects work in progress and finished goods against the agreed quality standard, separate from the department that makes the goods. |
| Work-in-progress (WIP) | أعمال قيد التشغيل (WIP) | Encours de production (WIP) | Ara stok (WIP) | Pieces that have started production but are not yet finished goods, sitting between two stages of the factory's workflow. |
You now know the fixed sequence of departments a physical order passes through. The next lesson goes inside one of those departments, the sewing line, and looks at how its own operations are balanced so work does not pile up at one point. Back to the course map