Cutting-room issue slips: closing the loop with the warehouse

Fabric starts to drift away from the records the moment it leaves the warehouse for the cutting room. If no slip is written, the record still shows it on the shelf; if a slip is written but the remnants and returns are never posted, the cutting room looks as if it is holding everything. Either way the figures do not agree on count day, and nobody can say whether the difference arose in the warehouse or in the cutting room. Three documents close the loop: the issue slip, the return slip and the end-of-cut reconciliation.

Write the issue slip roll by roll

"1,800 metres of fabric went to cutting" is not enough. The slip must show which rolls were issued:

• roll number, lot and colour code;
• the metres on each roll (read from the label, or measured if there is no label);
• the cutting order or sales order number;
• date and time of issue;
• name and signature of the cutting-room supervisor who received the fabric.

Why the roll number? When a half-used roll comes back mid-cut, the slip tells you which roll it was and how many metres were left. Work only with a total and you must guess which line the returned roll belongs to; a guess comes back in the count as a variance.

Three outcomes of cutting, three documents

When the cut is finished, the issued fabric has gone to one of three places:

1. Turned into pieces. The cut pieces go into cutting bundles; the metres used equal the number of pieces cut times the consumption per piece.
2. Remnants and part rolls. Usable ones return to the warehouse on a return slip; their metres are measured again and written on the label.
3. Waste. For unusable ends and trimmings a short waste slip or report is written; waste does not quietly pile up in a corner of the cutting room.

If one of the three has no document, the end-of-cut calculation does not close. The second is skipped most often: a small remnant stays in the cutting room "in case it is needed" and never goes back.

The end-of-cut reconciliation

When each cutting order is closed, one equation is run:

Issued = used + remnants returned + waste + still in the cutting room

An illustrative case: for one cutting order, 12 rolls × 150 m = 1,800 m of fabric were issued. The 1,400 pieces cut, at 1.2 m per piece, come to 1,680 m. 70 m of remnants went back to the warehouse, the waste report shows 10 m, and 30 m remain on a half-opened roll on the cutting table. 1,800 − 1,680 − 70 − 10 − 30 = 10 m cannot be explained; that is about 0.6 per cent of the quantity issued (10 ÷ 1,800). The amount is small, but it appears as the order closes, so it can be questioned the same day: is the factor out of date, was a sample cut without a slip, or is it a measuring allowance? At month end nobody remembers.

Consumption per piece comes from the cutting plan and must be updated when the model, fabric width or marker layout changes. An out-of-date factor produces an "unexplained difference" that drifts the same way on every order.

Three places that get missed

• Slips written in bulk at the end of the day or the end of the month. Fabric that leaves on a verbal "give me one roll" does not enter the record at that moment.
• Remnants shelved by the storekeeper without a slip. A new gap opens between the record and the rack.
• The same roll issued twice on two shifts, or an opened roll forgotten on a cutting-room shelf.

A small daily routine catches these. Every evening the two supervisors spend ten minutes on a list of rolls "issued and not returned": which roll is still in the cutting room, which order it belongs to, when it will come back. If the list is empty, the day closes; if not, an explanation is written beside each line. Those ten minutes replace a search that would otherwise take hours at month end.

In short

The cutting room should not sit outside the warehouse record; the fabric issued, used, returned and wasted should meet in the same equation. StockSystem counts material waiting on the cutting table, in the workshop or at a subcontractor and compares it with the issue slips; stock that exists only on paper usually shows up there.