This page is for a factory planner who receives a retailer's WSSI, a weekly sales, stock and intake plan, and has to schedule production against its own weekly intake figures rather than against the season total alone. At work, a planner who only looks at the season total can schedule production evenly across the season and still miss a single week where the retailer actually needs a large intake. This lesson mainly teaches the information flow: it shows how one open-to-buy figure, approved in the previous lesson, is broken into a week-by-week table of planned sales, planned stock, and the intake needed to connect the two.
Fairway Stores' buying team, having approved USD 35,000 of open-to-buy for Order A's own T-shirt category, now needs to plan exactly when that stock should arrive. It sends Northline Apparel, and through it Delta Garments, a four-week WSSI covering 3,400 pieces of planned sales. Without this skill, Karim, the production manager at Delta Garments, might schedule production in four equal batches, only to discover the retailer actually needed more stock in an early week and less in a later one.
You need: lesson T20-C02-L01, which shows how open-to-buy is approved before a season plan is built.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: adjusting the plan once real sales come in above or below forecast (lesson T20-C02-L03) and committing new stock against open-to-buy without overbuying (lesson T20-C02-L04).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| WSSI | A weekly sales, stock and intake plan: the week-by-week table a retailer builds once open-to-buy is approved. |
| Intake | New stock arriving into a retailer's own stockroom or distribution centre in a given week, from a confirmed order. |
| Opening stock | The stock a retailer holds at the very start of a given week, before that week's own intake or sales are counted. |
| Closing stock | The stock a retailer holds at the very end of a given week, after that week's own intake and sales are counted. |
| Stock cover | The number of weeks a retailer's current stock is expected to last before it runs out, given its normal sales rate. |
| Season budget | The total amount a retailer plans to spend buying stock for one season, set before it sees every brand's final range. |
A weekly sales, stock and intake plan states, for each week, the stock a retailer starts with, the sales it expects, the stock it wants to end with, and the intake needed to make that happen. Intake is never guessed on its own: it is worked out from the other three figures, so opening stock plus intake, minus planned sales, always equals the target closing stock for that week. A factory that receives this table knows not only how many pieces a retailer needs across a season, but which week each batch actually has to arrive.
A factory planner meets several shapes of WSSI depending on the buying model and the product, and reading the shape correctly stops a factory scheduling production that technically matches the season total but misses individual weeks.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Export Make to Order production, one confirmed run | Delta Garments produces Order A's own 15,000-piece run once against Fairway Stores' full-season WSSI, releasing intake in planned batches. | A single confirmed run still needs its own delivery dates broken out by week, or the retailer receives too much stock too early and not enough near the season's peak. |
| Domestic Make to Stock reordering against a forecast | A domestic retailer such as Cedar & Co. updates its own WSSI weekly from its own forecast, reordering from Delta Garments as needed. | The intake figure changes every week as the forecast is revised, so a Make to Stock WSSI is read fresh each week rather than fixed at the season's start. |
| A product with a long production lead time | Order A needs about sixteen weeks from approval to shipment, so an early week's intake must be ordered from Delta Garments well before that week arrives. | A factory planner reading only the current week's intake figure, without checking the lead time, can discover an order should already have been placed. |
| Socks, hosiery and other fast-turning products | A hosiery product ordered from a mill such as Suez Hosiery can have a much shorter production lead time than a T-shirt. | A shorter lead time gives a WSSI more room to adjust intake close to the week it is needed, lowering the risk of over- or under-ordering. |
Fairway Stores plans a four-week phase of Order A's own season, covering 3,400 pieces of planned sales out of the approved USD 35,000 open-to-buy. It starts the phase with 1,500 pieces already in its distribution centre, and wants to keep enough stock each week to cover roughly the following fortnight's own sales. Delta Garments reads this table to know when to release each cut batch, not only how many pieces the whole phase needs.
Delta Garments must schedule an intake of 900 pieces to arrive during week 3, larger than any other week in this phase. If Karim instead spread the phase's total intake of 3,300 pieces evenly across four weeks, at 825 pieces each, week 3 would fall 75 pieces short of what Fairway Stores' own plan actually needs that week.
The methodA common mistake is a factory planner scheduling production in equal weekly batches because the season total is known, without checking whether any single week's own WSSI actually needs more. Order A's own sixteen-week production lead time means a batch destined for an early, high-intake week must be ordered from Delta Garments well before that week arrives; an evenly spread schedule can leave the factory unable to meet a peak week at all, since fabric for that week's own larger batch was never ordered in time. What this costs is real: a retailer that runs short in a peak week loses sales it had already planned for, while a factory that overproduces for a quiet week ties up fabric and capacity it could have used for a different, better-timed batch.
A WSSI is a week-by-week table of what a retailer expects to sell, what stock it wants to hold, and what new stock has to arrive to make both true. Intake is not a guess; it comes from the stock a retailer starts a week with, the sales it plans for that week, and the stock it wants left at the end. A factory that only knows a season's total pieces can still schedule production wrong if it does not check which week actually needs the largest delivery.
Fairway Stores has sent Northline Apparel, and Northline Apparel has passed to Delta Garments, a four-week WSSI for Order A. Karim, the production manager, must decide how many pieces to schedule for cutting in each week, with the factory's cutting room able to produce about 800 pieces per week at normal capacity.
Here is the WSSI row Karim actually read for week 3:
Can Delta Garments meet week 3's own intake requirement at normal capacity? Decide before opening the answer.
No, not at normal capacity alone. Two figures in the WSSI row decide this.
First, week 3 needs an intake of 900 pieces. That is the target closing stock of 1,600 plus planned sales of 1,000, minus opening stock of 1,700.
Second, Delta Garments' normal cutting capacity is only 800 pieces per week. Meeting week 3's own requirement needs an extra 100 pieces above that normal rate.
Karim's options are to schedule some of week 3's own intake into an earlier week's production run, so it arrives in Fairway Stores' distribution centre in time, to run limited overtime to cover the 100-piece gap, or to flag the shortfall to Northline Apparel early enough that Fairway Stores can adjust its own target closing stock for that week. Waiting until week 3 itself to discover the gap leaves none of those three options available in time.
Using this lesson's own illustrative figures:
At Fairway Stores' own shop price of USD 19.90 per piece, a 100-piece shortfall in week 3 is USD 1,990 of sales the shop floor cannot make that week if stock simply runs out, even though the season's own total intake of 3,300 pieces was always enough across the whole four-week phase.
Open the course workbook's "WSSI" sheet. Enter each week's own opening stock, planned sales and target closing stock; the sheet calculates the intake required automatically and flags any week where required intake is above the factory's own normal capacity.
[Download the Open-to-buy and WSSI worksheet](../../templates/T20-C02-open-to-buy-and-wssi-worksheet.xlsx)
1. How is a week's own intake calculated in a WSSI?
2. A week starts with 2,000 pieces of stock, plans to sell 1,200 pieces, and wants to end the week with 2,200 pieces. What intake does this week need?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WSSI | WSSI | Plan hebdomadaire ventes, stock et réassort (WSSI) | WSSI | A weekly sales, stock and intake plan: the week-by-week table a retailer builds once open-to-buy is approved. |
| Intake | الوارد | Arrivage | Mal girişi (intake) | New stock arriving into a retailer's own stockroom or distribution centre in a given week, from a confirmed order. |
| Opening stock | المخزون الافتتاحي | Stock d'ouverture | Açılış stoku | The stock a retailer holds at the very start of a given week, before that week's own intake or sales are counted. |
| Closing stock | المخزون الختامي | Stock de clôture | Kapanış stoku | The stock a retailer holds at the very end of a given week, after that week's own intake and sales are counted. |
| Stock cover | تغطية المخزون | Couverture de stock | Stok kapsama süresi | The number of weeks a retailer's current stock is expected to last before it runs out, given its normal sales rate. |
| Season budget | ميزانية الموسم | Budget de saison | Sezon bütçesi | The total amount a retailer plans to spend buying stock for one season, set before it sees every brand's final range. |
You now know how to turn a season's own targets into a weekly sales, stock and intake plan. The next lesson shows what changes in that plan once real sales come in above or below forecast. Back to the course map