>.1.2 Sample room Planning

                             The planning section of the sample room is in charge of making the production plan for sewing and cutting processes. The importance of making a production plan for the sample room is to manage their sample producing process and the delivery of their goods in time to the buyer.

            The difference between the bulk production plan and the sample production plan is; that the sample room makes their production only for a day. But the bulk production plan is for a month.

·         Sample Requisition Sheet (SRF) ;

                 Sample Requisition Form is a document like the trim card, which includes all the trims and fabric samples of a particular sample. As these samples are still in the inquiry stage, the factory does not trend to buy accessories for making of samples. Except PP samples, they use factory sources to make sample and to prepare the SRF.
            Preparing of the SRF before the sample production starts is very important because the sample room needs fabric and trims references with their processing.
                   
            Preparing of the SRF before the sample production starts is very important because the sample room needs fabric and trims references with their processing.
                   
If we look at the production plan, first of all they should receive the SRF. The SRF should be handed over to the sample room on the day before the sewing date. The merchandising team prepares this SFR and there is a deadline to send SRF to sample planning officer. The cut off time is 3.00pm and after that time, the production planner starts create production plans for received SRFs.
                Before the sample room starts to sew sample for new style, they hold a meeting called The Risk Assignment Meeting. Some features of this meeting is same to the PP meeting and the main purpose of holding this meeting is for identifying the difficulties that they would have to face during the sampling process. Discussing the critical operations within the garment and give solutions for them are the main objectives of this RA meeting.

            The quality maintaining task is on the hands of tailors’ and no one is there to inspect the sewing process. Tailors have to submit a well finished garment to the quality section at the end of the sewing process. Then QC check is done for the finished samples’ quality.
            At the same time it shows how many samples for one tailor has to stitch.
            At the first time factory is placed an order for a new style and the sample room do a try-out sample. This is an internal process of the factory to take an idea about the garment and this is very important to the costing stage also. If it is a try out sample the pattern maker directly send his patterns to marker planer for marker drawing.
 Every developed patterns at the deferent stages are saved from their reference numbers in the sample room data base.
                                    Finally, patterns approved by the buyer are sent to the cutting department and they cut fabric by using these patterns. But at the costing and the ordering processes they don’t use approved patterns for marker drawing and they use pattern still at the developing stage.

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·         The Risk Assignment (RA) Meeting;

·                                 As I mentioned before, the sample room need multi skilled machine operators for sewing process. In the sample room the production plane is made by allocating one machine operator for one garment. That means a tailor has stitch the whole garment until it’s finished. That’s the reason sample room needs multi skilled machine operators on sewing machines.

·                                 In the sample room production plan, it shows who the machine operator is allocated for each garment. They are responsible for their sample and they should submit the finished sample in time.

·                     The samples in the production plan show what the sample stage of them is. By looking into the production plan we can identify what are the samples to be produced in a particular date and what is the stage of them.

·                     The sample room production plan should give the SMV for sewing the garment. These given SMVs for sample sewing are different from the SMV for the bulk production. The sampling SMV is greater than the SMV for the bulk production.

pattern making process 

    The pattern maker in the sample room is given the tech pack and the SRF for his Pattern making process. The pattern maker uses the Gerber CAD system with his pattern making process. All the details need to create the patterns is included in the tech pack and there is sketch or a photo of a garment where specifications are mentioned. He has to create these patterns according to the buyer requested specifications.

    The job of the pattern making is varying according to the sample stage. At each stage he has to follow different structures.

            When the samples are sent for approvals to the buyer, he do some comment on the received garment. This commented garment or photos once again sent back to the factory. If these comments are relevant with pattern making process he should do the adjustments according to the comments. If the samples sent to the buyer are repeating the same thing, pattern maker has to adjust the patterns according to the buyer’s comments. 

                        In addition to pattern making, pattern maker has to create a document called “The Cutter Must”. He includes the details relevant to the created patterns in this cutter must and frequency of each pattern within the garment. The cutter-must shows what are the fabric to be used for each patterns, by looking into a cutter must. We can understand how many fabric types should be used for particular garment style. (i.e. If there is garment with both body and piping fabric, pattern maker allocates each parts of the garment to relevant fabric.)

This is a model of Cutter Must document prepared by pattern maker

Marker planning 

            The created pattern by the pattern maker is sent to the marker planner for marker drawing process. The marker planner in the sample room has to prepare markers for costing and the ordering only. (See the page 56) The drawn markers are not sent to the cutting room for the cutting production.

 Cutting

There are no special markers for cut garment panels in the sample room. They don’t consider about the marker efficiency or fabric wastage of sample cutting as they produce garments in small quantity. (Only one or two garments from one fabric layer, has one or two plies only)

 The sample room cutting equipments are deferent from the equipments in the cutting room and they are not suitable to cut a layer with larger number of fabric plies.

 Work-study

                        The work-study in the sample room is involved with trim YY calculating process and SMV calculating process.
 The work-study officer has to calculate the trim YY of garment for costing and the given consumption by the work-study officer is sent to the trim ordering also.

Then he calculates the SMV of garments and this is also sent to the merchandiser for costing. The calculated SMV is sent to the work-study in the sewing department with GSD codes.

QC inspections 

            After the sewing process all the garments are sent to the QC table for quality inspecting. The QC process in the sample room is done by according to the buyer wise. QCs are allocated according to the buyer and they are specialized for their buyer. 
The QC process should ensure the sample quality very well and the QCs should be skilled than the end-line or in-line QCs. 
The samples are deeply inspected and after QC pass, samples are attached with a green tag (Only for the Express samples). The QC process differs from buyer to buyer and tagging process is also the same.
 The inspection parameters of the sample also vary according to its sample stage. The QC has to consider what purpose these samples are sent the buyer and he has to pay his attention mostly on that purpose of these samples.