Sara, the buyer at Northline Apparel, approves a tech pack for Order A, sends it to Delta Garments, and expects everyone downstream — pattern making, sourcing, costing, production and quality — to work from the same construction, the same bill of materials and the same measurements. A tech pack is not a one-time email attachment; it usually goes through several revisions before bulk production, and each revision can change a measurement, a material, a print placement or a wash instruction.
If the specification and its revisions live in scattered copies — one in an email thread, one in a shared folder, one printed and pinned to a wall — different people can work from different versions without knowing it. This lesson gives you a working rule for where a specification and its bill of materials should be controlled, so a revision reaches everyone who needs it and nobody builds from a superseded copy.
You need: the previous lesson's distinction between what an ERP system, a PLM system, a workflow tool and a spreadsheet are each meant to control.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: installing or configuring a specific PLM product, pattern-making software, or a full specification-management process. This lesson stays vendor-neutral.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tech pack | The controlled document that defines a garment's construction, measurements, materials and finishing so it can be costed and produced. |
| Bill of materials | The list of every material and trim needed to make one unit of a product, with quantities and approved sources. |
| Revision | An approved, dated change to a specification that replaces the previous approved version. |
| Revision history | The record of every approved revision to a specification, in order, so people can see what changed and when. |
| Superseded copy | A version of a specification that is no longer the current approved version, even if it still exists somewhere. |
| Controlled distribution | Sending a revision only through the approved channel, so recipients cannot mistake it for an uncontrolled copy. |
A tech pack is not correct simply because someone approved it once. It stays correct only if everyone who needs it is working from the current approved revision, and only if every past revision remains visible so people can see what changed. The bill of materials is part of the same controlled record: a fabric, trim or accessory change is a specification change, not a private note in someone's inbox.
Whether the controlled home is a named PLM system or a disciplined, version-controlled document, the same three things must be true: one current approved version exists, every past version is kept as history rather than deleted, and a revision is distributed through a controlled channel rather than a private message.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Export, buyer-approved specification | The buyer approves the master specification and every revision; the factory's own technical team maintains the controlled copy it works from and keeps it aligned with the buyer's approval. | If the factory's working copy drifts from the buyer's approved revision, production can build the wrong garment. |
| Domestic Make to Stock brand | A domestic brand's own design team approves its specification directly, without an external buyer's sign-off step. | The approval chain is shorter, but the same rule applies: one controlled current version, with history. |
| Small factory with no named PLM system | Specifications and their bill of materials live in a shared, version-controlled document with a visible revision log. | A controlled document can be a legitimate system of record; an unlabelled folder full of similarly named files is not. |
| Multiple factories on the same buyer specification | An agent or buying office distributes the same approved specification to more than one factory. | Every factory must receive the same revision at the same time; a factory working from an older copy can produce an inconsistent shipment. |
| Different product families | Socks and hosiery specifications add yarn and gauge detail; knit-to-garment adds shaping; terry towels add pile and border detail; bedding sets add set components and dimensions. | The bill of materials content changes by product family; the need for one controlled home with revision history does not. |
Sara at Northline Apparel approves the tech pack for Order A: 15,000 T-shirts, single jersey fabric at 180 GSM and Ne 30/1, size ratio 1:2:2:1, at the agreed USD 3.20 per piece FOB. The bill of materials lists the body fabric, neck rib, main label, care label and thread with their approved sources and quantities.
Partway through development, Sara approves a small revision to the neck rib specification. If she only mentions this change in a phone call to Mona, the change exists nowhere except two people's memories. Instead, the revision is issued as a new, dated version of the controlled tech pack, distributed through the agreed channel to Delta Garments' technical team, who then update the bill of materials and notify pattern making, sourcing and production that the previous neck rib copy is superseded.
The worked numberOrder A's approved fabric consumption is 0.205 kg per piece, including 7% marker waste, for 15,000 pieces.
If a revision changes the approved construction in a way that affects consumption — for example a longer body length — the bill of materials and the total fabric requirement it feeds must be revised together, not left showing the old 3,075 kg figure. A specification revision that changes a quantity but leaves the derived total unchanged creates exactly the kind of contradiction this course has already warned against: two figures for the same fact.
A verbal approval feels efficient in the moment, especially under a tight sampling deadline. But a verbal change has no date, no written detail and no distribution list. One department may act on it immediately, another may not hear about it for days, and a third may keep working from the version it printed out last week. The fix is not to slow down every small decision; it is to put even a fast decision into the controlled specification record before more than one person starts acting on it.
Think of a tech pack as the one true description of what a garment must be. It should live in one place that everyone trusts, and every change to it should be dated, visible and sent out properly, not whispered in a hallway or buried in an old email. The bill of materials is part of that same description: if a material changes, the specification changes.
When a change happens, update the description in its one home, tell everyone who needs to know through the agreed channel, and make sure the old version cannot be mistaken for the new one. That is the whole discipline: one home, dated history, controlled distribution.
During a sampling review call, Sara tells Mona she is happy to approve a slightly narrower neck rib for Order A. No written tech pack revision has been issued yet. Pattern making is waiting to finalise the pattern before cutting the next sample round.
What should Mona do before telling pattern making to proceed with the narrower neck rib? Decide before opening the answer.
Turn Sara's verbal approval into a dated, written tech pack revision before pattern making proceeds.
1. Mona confirms the exact change in writing with Sara — the new neck rib measurement — through the agreed communication channel, referencing Order A. 2. The technical team issues a new, dated revision of the tech pack showing the updated neck rib specification and bill of materials entry. 3. The previous neck rib specification is marked superseded, so nobody working from an older printed or saved copy continues using it. 4. Pattern making, sourcing and quality are notified of the new revision before the next sample round is cut.
Verbal approval on a call is a legitimate first step, but it is not itself the controlled record. The written, dated revision is what protects the order once more than one department has to act on it.
Order A's agreed value is directly derived from its fixed quantity and price:
If pattern making, cutting or sourcing act on different neck rib versions because the revision was never properly distributed, the factory risks cutting or sourcing material against the wrong specification across some or all of an order worth USD 48,000. Rework, re-cutting or re-sourcing material for even a small share of the order costs far more in time and money than the few minutes it takes to issue and distribute a proper written revision.
Use the T17-C02 Business-system role map workbook. For each specification field on Order A, record the current approved version, the date of its last revision, who approved it, and which teams have confirmed receipt of the current version. Start with Order A, then repeat the exercise for a specification you control yourself.
[Download the Business-system role map workbook](../../templates/T17-C02-business-system-role-map.xlsx)
1. Why must a bill of materials be treated as part of the controlled specification, not as a separate, informal list?
2. Sara approves a change verbally on a call. What is the correct next step before pattern making acts on it?
3. A factory has 8,000 pieces of a different socks order already cut to an old gauge specification when a revision changes the approved gauge. What must happen to the bill of materials and any derived material figures?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| Bill of materials | قائمة المواد | Nomenclature | Malzeme listesi | The list of every material and trim needed to make one unit of a product, with quantities and approved sources. |
| Revision | نسخة معدّلة | Révision | Revizyon | One numbered version of a document, such as a tech pack, produced when a change is made and approved. |
| Revision history | تاريخ المراجعات | Historique des révisions | Revizyon geçmişi | The record of every approved revision to a specification, in order, so people can see what changed and when. |
| Superseded copy | نسخة مستبدلة | Copie remplacée | Geçersiz kılınmış kopya | A version of a specification that is no longer the current approved version, even if it still exists somewhere. |
| Controlled distribution | التوزيع المضبوط | Diffusion contrôlée | Kontrollü dağıtım | Sending a revision only through the approved channel, so recipients cannot mistake it for an uncontrolled copy. |
Next you will learn where commercial and financial facts belong once a domestic Make to Stock programme is running. Back to the course map