A raw material store does not simply hand over an order's entire fabric the day cutting starts. Releasing too little stops the cutting line for lack of material; releasing too much leaves fabric sitting exposed on the cutting room floor, at greater risk of damage, mix-up or loss, and leaves the store's own book stock wrong until someone reconciles what was actually issued against what was actually cut. This lesson teaches how a storekeeper sizes and times a material issue so the cutting room always has what it needs, and no more, and applies it to Delta Garments' own raw material store for Order A.
Without a planned issuing method, a store either becomes a bottleneck that starves the cutting room, or a source of waste and lost control from over-releasing stock the cutting room cannot use yet. Both mistakes are avoidable once a storekeeper matches each issue to the cutting line's own daily capacity.
You need: the distinction between a raw material store and a finished goods store, and where work-in-progress sits, both from Lesson 1.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: tracking one fabric roll's own remaining balance (Lesson 3), or reconciling the store's own count against actual usage (Lesson 4). This lesson only teaches how material is released from the store to the cutting room.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Material issue | Releasing a measured quantity of fabric or trims from the raw material store to the cutting room or production line, recorded against a specific order. |
| Issue slip | The document that records what was issued from the raw material store, to which order, and how much, so the store's own book stock can be updated. |
| Cutting room | The area where bulk fabric is cut to the approved marker, the step between fabric arriving and sewing starting. |
| Roll | A length of fabric wound onto a cylindrical core for storage and transport. |
| Marker wastage | Fabric lost during cutting because pattern pieces never fill a cutting layout perfectly; a separate allowance from combing waste. |
| Fabric consumption | The amount of fabric (by weight or length) one garment piece uses, the basis for calculating an order's total fabric requirement. |
Issuing an entire order's fabric on day one of cutting looks efficient but is not: the cutting room can only process what its layers and its cutters can handle in a shift, so any fabric issued beyond that sits idle on the floor, exposed to damage, shade mix-up between rolls, or simple loss of track of what remains. A raw material store instead issues a batch sized to what the cutting room will actually cut that day or that shift, repeating the issue on a schedule until the order's fabric is fully released.
| What can differ | The shapes you meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | A Make to Order factory like Delta Garments issues fabric against one confirmed order's own cutting schedule, such as Order A's 15,000 pieces cut over a planned number of days. A Make to Stock factory issues fabric against a rolling production plan instead of one order's own finish date. | The issuing schedule follows a fixed order timeline in one case and a rolling plan in the other, but the batch-sizing principle is the same. |
| Product family | A garment factory issues fabric rolls and boxed trims by weight or piece; a hosiery mill issues yarn cones by weight to its knitting machines; a home-textiles converter issues fabric by length to its cutting tables; a terry mill issues yarn to its looms rather than issuing finished fabric. | The unit issued changes by product family, but every one of them still needs a batch sized to what the next stage can process that day. |
| Market | An export order under a fixed shipment date, such as Order A, needs its issuing schedule to keep pace with the timeline's own fabric and sewing stages, since a stall in cutting has no slack before a fixed port cut-off. A domestic order has more room to adjust the issuing schedule around a rolling reorder point. | A tighter export deadline makes disciplined, on-schedule issuing more important, not the batch-sizing method itself different. |
| Issue method | A single issue releases one batch for one cutting session; a running issue releases smaller amounts continuously as the cutting room reports capacity available, common on a fast-moving basic style. | The right method depends on how predictable the cutting room's own daily capacity is; an unpredictable capacity favours smaller, more frequent issues. |
Karim, the production manager, and the storekeeper agree that Order A's cutting line can lay up and cut about 1,000 pieces a day. Rather than releasing all of Order A's roughly 3,000 kg of fabric to the cutting room floor at once, the storekeeper issues one day's worth of fabric each morning, matched to that day's planned cutting, and records each issue on an issue slip stating the order, the quantity, and the date.
This keeps the cutting room floor clear of fabric it cannot yet use, and keeps the raw material store's own book stock moving down in step with what is actually being cut, rather than dropping to near zero on day one while cutting is still spread across several weeks.
The worked numberOver the roughly 15 working days needed to cut all 15,000 pieces at this rate, the store issues about 205 kg a day, totalling close to the order's own 3,075 kg fabric requirement by the last day of cutting. On any single day, the raw material store's own book stock should fall by about 205 kg, not by the full remaining balance, and the issue slip for that day should show exactly that quantity against Order A.
Issuing everything at once looks like it saves time, since the storekeeper only has to make one release instead of many. The cost of this mistake is that fabric the cutting room cannot process that day sits exposed on the floor for days or weeks, at higher risk of a shade mix-up between rolls, accidental damage, or simply losing track of how much has actually been cut versus how much is still waiting, while the raw material store's own book stock already shows the fabric as gone, no longer matching what a physical count of the store would show.
A raw material store does not hand fabric to the cutting room all at once. It releases only as much as the cutting room can actually cut that day, records exactly what left on an issue slip, and repeats this every day until the whole order is cut. Releasing too much leaves fabric sitting around unprotected; releasing too little stops the cutting line. Matching each issue to the cutting room's own daily capacity avoids both problems and keeps the store's own book stock accurate throughout the order.
Karim tells the storekeeper that the cutting room will be short-staffed for the next three days and wants three days' worth of Order A's fabric, about 615 kg, issued today so cutting is not held up when staff return.
Should the storekeeper issue the full 615 kg today as requested? Decide before opening the answer.
No. The storekeeper should issue only what the skeleton team can realistically cut each day, releasing the remaining fabric on the following days rather than all 615 kg at once.
1. A skeleton cutting team cannot process a normal day's capacity, so issuing three full days of fabric at once leaves most of the 615 kg sitting unused and exposed on the cutting room floor for days. 2. Fabric sitting idle for an extended period carries a real risk of shade mix-up, damage or misplacement, especially with reduced staff on hand to monitor it closely. 3. A phased issue, matched to what the skeleton team can actually cut each day, keeps the raw material store's own book stock accurate and avoids releasing stock the factory then has to search for or explain later.
The request to work ahead is reasonable, but the fix is a smaller, more frequent issue matched to the reduced capacity, not a single large release sized to a normal day's output.
Order A carries a FOB price of USD 3.20 per piece on 15,000 pieces, giving:
If even 5% of a single day's over-issued fabric, about 10 kg, were damaged or lost to a shade mix-up while sitting unused on the cutting room floor, that fabric would need replacing at its purchase price of USD 5.60 per kg, a loss of USD 56.00 for that one incident, on top of the delay in finding and correcting the error. Against an order worth USD 48,000, the loss itself is small, but it buys nothing: the fabric would have been cut just as fast issued in the correct, smaller batch, so the only effect of over-issuing is added risk with no offsetting benefit.
Use the T24-C02 Raw material store tracker workbook, "Material issue log" sheet. For each issue, record the order, the date, the quantity issued, and the cutting room's own planned capacity for that period, so an over-issue stands out immediately. Start with Order A's own daily batches above, then add your own issues.
[Download the Raw material store tracker workbook](../../templates/T24-C02-raw-material-store-tracker.xlsx)
1. Why does a raw material store issue fabric to the cutting room in batches instead of releasing an entire order's fabric on the first day?
2. A different factory's cutting room can process 500 pieces a day, and its standard fabric consumption is 0.30 kg per piece. What should its daily material issue be?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Material issue | صرف المواد | Sortie de matière | Malzeme çıkışı | Releasing a measured quantity of fabric or trims from the raw material store to the cutting room or production line, recorded against a specific order. |
| Issue slip | إذن الصرف | Bon de sortie | Malzeme çıkış fişi | The document that records what was issued from the raw material store, to which order, and how much, so the store's own book stock can be updated. |
| 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. |
| Roll | لفة القماش | Rouleau | Top | A length of fabric wound onto a cylindrical core for storage and transport. |
| Marker wastage | فاقد الماركر | Perte de placement (marker) | Marker firesi | Fabric lost during cutting because pattern pieces never fill a cutting layout perfectly; a separate allowance from combing waste. |
| Fabric consumption | استهلاك القماش | Consommation de tissu | Kumaş tüketimi | The amount of fabric (by weight or length) one garment piece uses, the basis for calculating an order's total fabric requirement. |
Next you will learn how to track exactly how much fabric remains on one specific roll after each cut is taken from it, instead of only watching the store's total balance. Back to the course map