Fabric Utilization

Fabric Utilization by Apparel Search - Terms of Interest to the Fashion Industry

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When producing garments in many parts of the world you are looking at 60% to 70% of the cost taken in fabric, so this must be controlled.  With the correct systems and procedures ensuring you fully utilize your fabric you can also ensure or improve your shipment performance.

Your fabric and accessories must be controlled, Every single inch of fabric and every single accessory no matter it's a button or label must be accounted for, after all at the end of the day you don't want to be having garments on hand at the end of an order and shipment because you have not got a couple of labels to ship the goods. Good systems and management controls in place will ensure you don�t have these issues.   And on another side could increase your shipment performance.

As it stands right now, most buyers will accept over 100% shipment, this is an area that factories need to target because anything past 100% will bring extra revenue to the company without any additional cost because you have already purchased the raw materials (fabric and accessories)

After all just a small percentage of saving in fabric together with an increased shipment performance is worth thousands of dollars (US$) to your company.

In order for you to fully utilize your fabric and increase your shipment performance you need to look into the following, this can be done in stages, or you can complete the whole process at one time with follow ups at a later stage, provided all the systems are followed there is no reason why this cannot be achieved.

• Fabric Procurement (yardage yield)
• Fabric Utilization
• Width Batching
• Shrink Batching
• Fabric Length Evaluation
• Roll Identification & Allocation
• Fabric Claims
• Marker Ratios
• Ply control
• Cut Projections
• Warehouse Procedures
• Cutting procedures
• Lay planning Procedures

With the proper systems and procedures, and with the advanced information for fabric and markers you can project your cutting figures before you even start cutting your fabric, this is a good tool to communicate with your buyers as to what they can expect in terms of shipment quantity.  Another advantage would be for you to use this same information for claims against your fabric mill.  You have paid for the fabric so you should be receiving what you pay for in terms of fabric width and length, After all both of these will have an impact on your total cut quantity against order quantity.

The information on this page has been donated to Apparel Search by our friends at Fabric Utilization in the United Kingdom.   They are consultants offering fabric utilization for the textile, apparel and fashion industry, increasing fabric utilization to reduce yardage yield, yet increase shipment performance at no additional cost. Offering validated systems and procedures in warehouse, cutting and lay planning.  UTILIZING FABRIC FOR PROFIT

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You may also want to learn about fabric by the yard, greige fabric, and bolts of fabric.

Apparel Search finds fabric utilization to be an extremely important issue when producing apparel.  If you are in agreement, we suggest you consult the experts.  Our suggestion is to contact Scott at Fabric Utilization.  He is based in the United Kingdom but offers consulting services internationally.  You can e-mail to Scott at scott@fabric-utilization.co.uk 

If you like to further discuss how to properly utilize fabric and other issues relevant to the apparel industry, please join us for discussions at the Fashion Industry Network.

Markers and the Cutting Room

Utilization is decided in the cutting room, at the marker. A marker is the layout of all pattern pieces for a production run, drawn at the full width of the fabric. Pieces are irregular shapes, so some waste between them is unavoidable; the marker maker's skill — today usually assisted by CAD software that can try thousands of arrangements — is to interlock the pieces so the gaps shrink. Mixing sizes in one marker helps, because small pieces fill the spaces left by large ones.

Cost and Sustainability

The same percentage reads two ways. Financially, utilization converts directly into yards purchased per garment. Environmentally, the unused percentage becomes cutting waste, most of which is landfilled. That is why utilization appears in both cost engineering and sustainability discussions: better markers mean cheaper garments and less textile waste from exactly the same design.