This page is for anyone who receives an SMV table someone else built and must decide whether to trust it. A table can look complete and professional while still containing an error: a rating outside any plausible range, a row whose basic time and SMV do not actually match its own observed time and allowance, or a printed total that does not equal the sum of its own rows. An audit checks these things directly, rather than trusting the table because it looks finished.
This matters most to a merchandiser who did not build the table but must rely on it, such as Omar at Cedar & Co., a domestic Make to Stock brand, reviewing a full SMV table for his own next production run before confirming how many operators it needs and what it will cost.
Without an audit, a single wrong number in one row can flow silently into a line balance, a piece rate, or a costing sheet, and nobody notices until the real line underperforms or the real cost overruns what the table promised. This lesson gives you the checks to run before that happens.
You need: lesson 8.1.2's method for building one operation's own SMV, and lesson 8.1.3's method for building a full table.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: how to build a table from scratch (lesson 8.1.3) or how to build an operation's time with PMTS (lesson 8.1.4); this lesson assumes a table already exists and needs checking.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Audit | A planned visit or review that checks a factory against a required standard, not against one order's specification. |
| Standard minute value (SMV) | The standard time, in minutes, a trained operator needs to complete one operation on one piece, used to calculate a line's expected output and workload. |
| Basic time | Observed time adjusted by the rating, giving the time a standard-pace operator would need for the same operation, before any allowance is added. |
| Rating | A work-study specialist's judgement of how the observed operator's pace compares to a defined standard pace, expressed as a percentage (100% is standard pace). |
| Personal, fatigue and delay allowance (PFDA) | A percentage added to basic time to cover an operator's personal needs, unavoidable fatigue, and short unavoidable delays, turning basic time into a standard minute value. |
| Operation breakdown | The list of every separate sewing step needed to complete a garment, each assigned to one operator and one machine on the line. |
A finished-looking table can still contain an arithmetic error, an implausible rating, or a total that does not match its own rows. Auditing means recalculating basic time from observed time and rating, recalculating SMV from basic time and allowance, and re-adding every row into the total, then comparing every recalculated figure against what the table actually shows. A table's appearance is not evidence of its accuracy.
A person who has only audited one simple table should not assume every audit looks the same. The underlying checks, recalculating rows and the total, stay constant; what differs is what is most worth checking first.
| What can differ | The shapes you meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A table built in-house, by a known work-study specialist | An in-house table, like the one Delta Garments' own specialist built in lesson 8.1.3, is more likely to have a genuine transcription slip than a fabricated figure. | The audit still recalculates everything, but a transcription error is the more likely finding. |
| A table received from an outside or new supplier | A table from a factory not yet well known to the buyer or brand deserves the same recalculation, with no greater trust extended just because it arrived on letterhead. | An unfamiliar source is exactly when skipping the audit is most tempting and most risky. |
| Export orders where a buyer questions a costed making charge | An export buyer such as Northline Apparel may specifically ask to see the SMV table behind a making charge, making an internal audit before that conversation essential. | Finding an error internally first is far better than a buyer finding it during a costing dispute. |
| A domestic brand relying on a table for its own workforce planning | Cedar & Co., using a table to decide how many operators its own domestic run needs, has no external buyer to catch an error, so the internal audit is the only check that will happen. | Without an external check ever coming, an unaudited domestic table can carry an error indefinitely, undetected. |
Omar, the owner of Cedar & Co., receives the full SMV table built in lesson 8.1.3 for his own next domestic production run: shoulder join, sleeve attach, neck rib attach, side seam, and hem. Before using the table to decide how many operators the run needs, Omar checks the table's own printed total against what the five rows actually add up to.
| Fact | What it tells Omar |
|---|---|
| The table prints a total of 2.75 minutes | This is the figure Omar would use for planning if he trusted it without checking |
| The five rows' own SMVs are 0.41, 0.62, 0.72, 0.50 and 0.37 minutes | Adding these gives the true total, independent of whatever is printed |
| The true sum of the five rows is 2.62 minutes | This does not match the printed 2.75 minutes |
| No single row, checked individually, shows an implausible rating or an obviously wrong calculation | The error is specifically in the addition, not in any one row's own build-up |
A table can have every individual row correctly built and still print a wrong total, because the addition step is a separate place an error can enter.
The worked numberThis example is illustrative, not a claimed fixed academy fact: the five rows' own SMVs are the same teaching figures built in lesson 8.1.3. Adding them gives the table's true total, which is then compared against the 2.75 minutes printed on the table Omar received.
The true sum of the table's five rows, 2.62 minutes, and the 0.13-minute gap against the 2.75 minutes printed on the table.
A common mistake is treating a table's finished appearance, clear columns, tidy formatting, a confident printed total, as evidence that its figures are correct. A well-formatted table with a wrong total looks exactly as trustworthy as a well-formatted table with a correct one; formatting says nothing about arithmetic. Skipping the recalculation because the table looks professional lets an error, wherever it entered, flow directly into costing or workforce planning unchecked.
Before you trust a table of standard times someone else built, check the numbers yourself. Recalculate each row from its own starting figures, and check that the total actually equals what the individual rows add up to. A table can look neat and finished and still have a wrong total, because adding up numbers is a separate step from getting each individual number right. Do not trust a table just because it looks professional; a wrong total can look exactly as tidy as a correct one.
Omar, having recalculated the true sum of the five rows as 2.62 minutes against the table's own printed total of 2.75 minutes, contacts Delta Garments' work-study specialist to ask about the difference before he plans his own domestic run's workforce around either figure.
Omar's message reads:
Should Omar plan his own domestic run's workforce around the table's printed total of 2.75 minutes, or the recalculated 2.62 minutes.
The recalculated 2.62 minutes, since it is the true sum of the table's own correctly built rows; the printed 2.75 minutes contains an addition error.
First, every individual row is correctly built. Each of the five operations' own SMV, checked against its own observed time, rating and allowance, matches what lesson 8.1.3 built: 0.41, 0.62, 0.72, 0.50 and 0.37 minutes.
Second, the printed total does not equal the sum of those rows. Adding the five correctly built SMVs gives 2.62 minutes, not the 2.75 minutes printed on the table; the error is specifically in the addition step, not in any operation's own build-up.
Omar should plan his own workforce needs around the recalculated 2.62 minutes, and ask Delta Garments to correct the printed total on the table itself so the same error does not mislead the next person who reads it.
If Omar had planned his own domestic run's workforce using the uncorrected 2.75-minute total, he would have overstated the true time each garment needs by 0.13 minutes, a 5% overstatement against the true 2.62-minute figure.
Across a domestic run at the same scale as Order A, 15,000 pieces, a 5% overstated garment SMV translates into an overstated workforce requirement for the whole run, since every planning calculation that starts from the garment's total SMV inherits the same 5% error, either idling operators Omar did not actually need or mis-costing the run's true labour time.
Open the SMV build-up calculator. Enter the outside table's own observed time, rating and allowance for each row into the calculator's input columns, and let the calculator's live formulas recalculate basic time, SMV, and the total independently. Compare the calculator's own total against what the outside table printed, exactly as this lesson's worked number does, before trusting either figure for your own costing or planning.
1. What is the correct way to audit an existing SMV table before trusting it?
2. A table shows five operations with SMVs of 0.30, 0.40, 0.35, 0.45 and 0.20 minutes, and a printed total of 1.80 minutes. What does an audit find?
3. Why is a table's professional, well-formatted appearance not evidence that its figures are accurate?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audit | التدقيق | Audit | Denetim | A planned visit or review that checks a factory against a required standard, not against one order's specification. |
| Standard minute value (SMV) | قيمة الدقيقة المعيارية (SMV) | Valeur minute standard (SMV) | Standart dakika değeri (SMV) | The standard time, in minutes, a trained operator needs to complete one operation on one piece, used to calculate a line's expected output and workload. |
| Basic time | الزمن الأساسي | Temps de base | Temel süre | Observed time adjusted by the rating, giving the time a standard-pace operator would need for the same operation, before any allowance is added. |
| Rating | تقييم الأداء | Évaluation d'allure | Derecelendirme | A work-study specialist's judgement of how the observed operator's pace compares to a defined standard pace, expressed as a percentage (100% is standard pace). |
| Personal, fatigue and delay allowance (PFDA) | هامش الشخصي والتعب والتأخير | Marge personnelle, fatigue et délai | Kişisel, yorgunluk ve gecikme payı | A percentage added to basic time to cover an operator's personal needs, unavoidable fatigue, and short unavoidable delays, turning basic time into a standard minute value. |
| Operation breakdown | تفصيل العمليات | Décomposition des opérations | Operasyon dökümü | The list of every separate sewing step needed to complete a garment, each assigned to one operator and one machine on the line. |
You have completed Work Study and SMV. The next course uses an audited SMV table to calculate a line's daily capacity. Back to the course map