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Cutting department quality control is the discipline of inspecting a factory cutting room before small spreading and cutting errors turn into hundreds of defective garments. The standing warning is simple: even with an experienced cutting room staff, do not assume everything is being done perfectly. Effective inspection is random examination - the inspector keeps no set routine, so workers never know when or how a check will come - and covers marker placement, shading, table marks, splices, narrow goods, tension, ply count and leaning, with every defect corrected immediately rather than merely recorded.
Cutting Department Quality Control: Cutting Room Quality Control - Terms of Interest to the Fashion Industry
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If you have an experienced cutting room staff to inspect, do NOT assume that they are doing every thing perfectly.
Effective inspection requires random examination of cutting operations. The inspector should not develop a set routine. You do not want the workers to be in the habit of knowing when and how you will conduct your inspection. You should make every effort to get a fair representation of the cutting production by making random checks on the cutting room floor. When checking spreaders, make certain to check for marker placement, shading, table marks, etc. Here are a few issues to check.
Marker Placement: check that the marker is placed on the spread with the edge parallel to the selvage of the piece goods. Verify that all cut pieces will be complete.
Shading: unless all parts are plymarked, it is essential to have a system to control shading.
Table marks : check the table marks as they table is marked. Allow no minus tolerance for the splices.
Markers: ensure that no markers are creased, damaged, or have overlapped parts.
Splices: after completion of the spread, check splice laps to see that both piles extend past the marked splice by no less then 1/2 inch and no more then 1 inch.
Narrow Goods: after completion of the spread, check the far edge of the spread to see that all plies extend beyond the marker line.
Tension: check tension during spreading. This is very important on knit fabrics.
Count: check the count after completion of spreading, and before cutting. Count all plies at both ends. There should be no tolerance.
Leaning: check carefully to ensure that one edge of the fabric is square to table top. Visually inspect the alignment of the edge with the table top.
Record the
spreading defects by the quantity of defects
found for each checkpoint. Any defective
work discovered by the inspector should be
immediately corrected.
Do not only record the problem.
Make sure to fix the problem immediately.
If you have new employees, you should certainly monitor them more closely and more often.
Find out the meaning of a cutting ticket.
Make sure that your company has a very good QC Manager.
Learn about Piece Goods Inspection and In-Process Quality Control.
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Cutting sits between fabric inspection and sewing, and it is the last point where a fabric problem can be stopped cheaply. Piece goods inspection catches flawed cloth before it reaches the table; cutting room checks then make sure the good cloth is spread, marked and cut accurately; and in-process quality control follows the bundles into sewing. A shading error or a short splice that slips past the cutting table is multiplied by every ply in the lay - one mistake becomes a full size run of mismatched panels - which is why the checks listed here carry tolerances as strict as no tolerance at all on the ply count.
The paperwork ties the room together. The cutting ticket records what was cut, in which sizes and quantities, and the marker links the lay to the graded pattern set; the QC manager's checkpoint log, kept by the quantity of defects found at each checkpoint, shows whether problems cluster at spreading, at the knife, or with particular fabrics - knits, for example, demand the extra tension checks described on this page because a stretched lay relaxes into smaller pieces after cutting.
Marker placement parallel to the selvage so all cut pieces are complete; shading control, with plymarking where parts are not all marked; table marks and splices, with splice laps extending no less than half an inch and no more than one inch past the marked splice; tension during spreading, especially on knits; the ply count at both ends, with no tolerance; and leaning, so one edge of the fabric stays square to the table top.
A set routine lets the floor prepare for the inspection instead of working correctly all the time. Random checks get a fair representation of real production - and new employees should be monitored more closely and more often until their work is proven.
It is corrected immediately. Recording the problem is not enough: the defective work is fixed on the spot, defects are logged by checkpoint and quantity, and the related quality steps on this page - quality assurance, piece goods inspection and in-process quality control - pick up from there.