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Essential Fabric Quality Reports For Bulk Cutting Approval of Fabrics-12Oct20
Essential Fabric Quality Reports For Bulk Cutting Approval of Fabrics-12Oct20
Fabric is the main raw material for garment manufacturing and it involves 60-70% of total garment cost.
To ensure that only quality fabric is used in garments, factory takes precautionary measures and set up
fabric inspection department with qualified personnel. Standard procedures of fabric inspection, preparing
inspection report following international or national standards followed by top tier garment manufacturers
have been explained in this article.
As per quality standards, prior to bulk production cutting, factory prepares following three reports and
takes approval from authorised person.
1. Fabric inspection report
2. Fabric shrinkage report
3. Shade band report for 100% fabric rolls (applicable for dyed and printed fabric).
The above three reports are submitted for approvals within 48 hours of fabric inhouse. According to
Standard procedures (SOP), initially only 10% of the fabric rolls is inspected on 4-Point System. If there
is any doubt on acceptance further 10% of total fabric rolls are Inspected. Some manufactures prefer
doing 100% fabric inspection in order to get ensure that only quality fabric is cut and fed to the line.
During 100% inspection fabric inspectors mark all the defects so they can identify them during spreading
and replace the parts after cutting.
If fabric is cut without being inspected, complete responsibility will be on fabric quality inspection
department as it is a violation of a critical aspect. Reports are submitted to buyers & the relevant
merchandiser.
Defects in both the wrap and weft directions for woven and course/wale directions for knits are
assigned point using the following criteria:
Points Inches (”) (mm)
1 Point Defects up to 3 inches Up to 75mm
2 Point Defects > 3 inches < 6 inches Defects > 75mm< 150mm
3 Point Defects > 6 inches < 9 inches Defects > 150mm< 230mm
4 Point Defects > 9 inches Defects > 230mm
A continuous defect running 9 inches / 230mm or longer is assigned four points for each meter that
occurs within the shipment. Other important parameters to be considered during fabric inspection are
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i) Length of the faults is to be measured in the warp or weft direction and the direction in which the fault
is longest is the fault direction. However when the warp and weft length are same and when the penalty of
the shorter direction is heavier, take the fault of the direction in which the penalty is heavier.
ii) When the fault in the warp direction is over 1yd, the part which is over 1yd is deemed as fault of the
same kind of others.
iii) When two or more faults overlap, apply only the faults which penalty is the heavier.
iv) When there are two or more faults within the length of 1yd and the penalty points come over 4 points,
the points over 4 points are not added.
v) The inspector needs to be at a distance of 3 feet away from the inspection table and the linear speed of
inspection not to be less than 0.1 meters per second when inspection is done on fabric inspection machine.
2. Fabric shade band report:
For styles those required garment washing, before and after wash blankets is submitted ( 3 sets each )
covering all rolls and it is attached in the shade continuity card .
A 100% shade band covering all rolls & all colors pertaining to a certain style / Consignment is made
and get approved prior to cutting of bulk Fabric.
Shrinkage Templates (25cm*25cm or 50cm*50cm) are used in industry to gauge the shrinkage %
directly.
Fabric Shrinkage measurement template
If you don’t have a shrinkage template then you can calculate the shrinkage or gain as directed in
Equations 1 and 2 by marking fabric with help of a simple scale.
Fabric shrinkage testing samples