Garment manufacturing · Live
Thirteen stages, one system, no phone calls.
A garment manufacturer in Kolkata running production across in-house stages and outside vendors, where the answer to "where is this order" depended on who you asked.
13tracked stages
Roll-leveltraceability
In production usestatus
What it replaced, and what it does now.
Before
- Stage status held on paper and in supervisors' memory
- Material sent to printers and embroiderers tracked in a diary
- Cutting occasionally started before rib and thread had arrived
- Shortfall discovered at packing, with no way to locate where it happened
- Order status answered by calling the floor
Now
- Every order's current stage visible on one screen
- Vendor dispatch and receipt recorded with dates and quantities
- A stage that will not open until the one before it is genuinely complete
- Rejections logged at the stage they occur, so loss has a location
- Status answered by looking, not by asking
Every stage, gated on the one before it.
A stage will not open until the one before it is genuinely complete, so nothing starts on material that has not arrived.
Stage tracking
Fabric receipt
Rib & thread
Cutting
Printing
Embroidery
Dispatch
[ Product screenshot ]
Real screen from the live system. Blur customer names.
- 01Fabric receipt
- 02Rib & thread
- 03Cutting
- 04Printing
- 05Embroidery
- 06Sewing
- 07Quality check
- 08Ironing
- 09Packing
- 10Finished stock
- 11Dispatch
Questions people actually ask
What does roll-level traceability actually mean here?
Each fabric roll is identified on receipt and that identity survives cutting — so a finished piece still maps back to the lot it was cut from. When a buyer raises a quality question months later, the answer is a lookup rather than an investigation.
Why gate each stage on the one before it?
Because the expensive mistakes in a garment unit are sequencing mistakes: cutting against material that has not arrived, or sending for printing what has not been fully cut. Making the next stage refuse to open is the cheapest possible way to stop that, and it does not depend on anybody remembering to check.
How long did this take to build?
It was not built as one project. The first useful piece went into real use and the rest was added around it as the floor found gaps — which is how we prefer to work, because the gaps you find in use are never the ones you predicted.
Could this work for our unit?
The stage list would be yours, not this one — that is most of the point. What transfers is the shape: your real stages, gated in order, with job work tracked and rejections captured where they happen.
What went into it
Let's talk
Could this work for your unit?
The stage list would be yours, not this one — that is most of the point. Tell us how your process actually runs.