Critical path management

One of the key principles of best practice in production management is having control and knowledge of the critical path for your orders. A critical path is a timeline that reflects not only the anticipated delivery date of your purchase orders but what each of those orders is made up of, what each needs in order to be completed and for you to fulfil those deliveries.

Once you have sold your collection, and calculated the requirements for your purchase orders of fabric and trims, you need to ensure that you keep track of each fabric and trim used in your collection so that they can be monitored.

Don’t forget that it is not just these physical items that will affect the delivery date of your garments but also the services that are required to bring your orders to fruition, e.g. pattern-cutting, printing, embroidering etc.

It is important to be aware of the impact that late deliveries will have on the final deliveries to your customers. Without a good understanding of the whereabouts of your fabric and trims in the production process, you risk disruption and delay to your production which could cause cancellation of your orders and non-payment from stores.

Many designers use a dedicated computer software system for the management of their critical path process. If you are not ready for a software system, you should create your own method of critical path management – the Best Practice section below outlines how to get started.

The first step is to know where everything for your orders is going to come from and how long it will take for them to be delivered once you have ordered them. You should have a rough idea of the lead times on fabric and trims before you take orders from your customers. It is quite common, and not very professional, for designers to take orders that need a particular fabric only to find that it is unavailable due to long lead times, or that there are large minimums that can’t be met by your order. For example, it is no good quoting an end-July delivery to your stockists, if the Italian fabric supplier cannot produce your order until after their August closure.

Another common issue arises when designers assume that once the fabric has been delivered to the factory, the dockets will go straight into production. In fact, many factories will not, or cannot, start the production until all the accompanying trims have been delivered. It is not uncommon to hear of large orders being cancelled because the late delivery of labels meant that the docket ‘missed its slot’ in the factory’s production schedule. A delay with £10 of labels can jeopardise an order worth thousands of pounds.

The biggest influence on the delivery dates to your customers is, however, how the factory performs once they have all the necessary components in their possession. If you visit a factory in March and it quotes you three weeks delivery, don’t assume that it will still be three weeks if you only give them the docket in July, when the whole industry is so much busier.

Best Practice

• Speak to all your suppliers and establish the lead-time for all the fabrics and trims in your collection - do not guess!
• Create an Outlook diary (or similar) in which you can record when all your purchase orders are due.
• Use this diary to check the progress with your suppliers on a weekly basis.
• Keep the factory informed of delays to docket components so that they can juggle their production accordingly - it is in your best interest for the factory to be running efficiently.
• Know which country your component orders are being produced in and the method of shipping.
• Be aware of supplier factory closures in holiday periods - Italy and France in particular.
• Don’t assume that the factory knows that vital fabrics and trims have been delivered to them - warn them they are coming and get them to let you know when the items have arrived safely.
• If fabric or components are delivered direct from your suppliers to the factory, it is vital that the goods are checked for correctness and counted before the factory starts to use them.

Download critical path management (PDF 0.24Mb)