The 6,000 m Poplin Lot: Rebate, Replacement or Pilot Cut?
A Jaipur uniform manufacturer receives 6,000 m of cotton poplin against a PO for 3,000 school shirts. The tech pack specifies 40s × 40s, 110 gsm, 120 ends/inch × 60 picks/inch, 44-inch width, and a maximum 2% shrinkage in warp and weft after three home washes. The supplier's own mill report claims every parameter passes. On receipt, the in-house lab tests one randomly drawn 2 m sample and reports 96 gsm, 108 EPI × 56 PPI, warp shrinkage 6.5% and weft shrinkage 5.2%, and the warp feels noticeably finer than the approved swatch. Cutting is scheduled in nine days and the ship date is fixed because the shirts are for a school reopening. The supplier offers a 4% price rebate and argues the fabric is 'commercially acceptable'. The production head wants to start cutting immediately to protect the ship date; the merchandiser wants a full replacement lot. The MD asks you for a decision with reasons.
1. Read the test data together: what most probably happened at the yarn and fabric stage, and how are the four failures linked to each other?
Read the worked answer
The four results are one story, not four accidents.
- Finer warp + lower sett = lighter fabric. GSM is driven by yarn count and sett. The warp feels finer than the approved swatch and EPI has fallen from 120 to 108 (about 10% fewer ends) while PPI is 56 instead of 60. A finer warp with a looser sett easily explains 96 gsm against the 110 gsm spec; the two deviations compound rather than cancel.
- Low sett and low cover raise shrinkage. Fewer interlacing points mean the yarns are less restrained and can crimp and relax more during washing, so the 6.5%/5.2% shrinkage is consistent with the construction being too open, not just with a missed finishing step.
- Finishing is probably also short. Even a loose construction should be pulled back towards 2% by proper compressive shrinkage (sanforising) or a controlled laundering/relaxation step. 6.5% warp is three times the tolerance, which points to under-finished fabric, possibly grey-loom state or under-stretched, as well as to the sett.
- One 2 m sample proves little. The 4% rebate is being offered against a measured non-conformity on a single sample; the variability across 6,000 m is unknown, so the sample is a warning, not a verdict.
Diagnosis: a lighter, looser, under-shrunk cloth substituted for the approved construction. The supplier's mill report does not match an independent test, so the approval chain itself is suspect.
2. Give your disposition decision for the 6,000 m and the conditions you would attach. Address the ship date explicitly.
Read the worked answer
Decision: no bulk cutting of the full lot; conditional acceptance only against evidence and buyer consent.
Reasoning chain:
- A school shirt is a high-wash garment. At 6.5% warp shrinkage on a 70 cm shirt length, the garment loses roughly 4.5 cm in length and will shrink out of fit after two or three washes. No rebate covers the returns and reputation cost.
- Because the fabric construction was specified by the buyer, any deviation must be approved in writing by the buyer, not merely discounted by the mill.
Conditions I would attach:
- Roll-by-roll testing – at least 10% of rolls, spread across the lot, tested for GSM, sett and shrinkage on the same method cited in the PO. Only rolls inside tolerance go to the pilot.
- Pilot cut of 150–200 shirts from the best rolls, washed three times and measured. This is the only reliable proof that the finished garment holds size.
- Commercial settlement – rebate sized against the real loss: extra metres consumed, extra wash-testing cost, and the risk of a claim, not 4%.
- Ship-date protection – split the shipment. Ship the pilot-proven quantity on time; push the balance with a written revised date. A late but correct shipment is cheaper than a full lot of shrunken shirts.
- Do not let the supplier's mill report stand as the approval record. Retain the independent report and the approval sample.
3. List the incoming-material and PO controls you would put in place so this cannot recur on the next uniform order.
Read the worked answer
At the PO and tech-pack stage
- Write every parameter with a tolerance band and a test method (for example shrinkage by a named standard wash, GSM by cut-and-weigh, sett by counting a 1-inch square at three places per roll), so 'pass' has a definition.
- Name the approved construction with count, sett, GSM, width and shrinkage limits, and make the mill report a claim against that specification, not a substitute for it.
- Make buyer approval of a pre-production fabric swatch, retained and signed, a condition of the order.
At receipt
- Sample randomly by roll, not from one convenient end; test 10% of rolls for a new supplier, 5% for an approved one.
- Keep a shade/construction card file so the fineness of the warp can be compared against the approved swatch on the table.
- Quarantine the lot until the lab report is signed off; cutting release should be a named person's decision.
Supplier management
- Score every lot on measured conformity and reject/rework cost; review the score before the next allocation.
- Build a shrinkage allowance into the pattern only as a documented decision, never as a way of hiding a bad lot.
- Keep a pilot-wash record for each fabric family, so the next order has a baseline to compare against.