How it works · Apparel and garment exporters
Stop paying air-freight penalties on export orders
Export margin is rarely lost in one big mistake. It leaks through lab dips nobody chased, missed fabric checks and sewing lines that fall behind until days before the deadline. Walk through the process and see how tracking work at the floor keeps shipments on time and in full.
An export order is not lost on the day it ships late. It is lost in a hundred small misses before that: the lab dip nobody chased, the trim that arrived on Thursday instead of Monday, the line that ran at 48 percent for a week and nobody noticed.
By the time the ex-factory date arrives, the only levers left are air freight, a discount, or a chargeback. All three come out of a CM margin that was already thin.
Below is the export process as it really runs, not as the TNA calendar says it runs. Read the left column and tick every line that is true in your unit. Nothing gets submitted anywhere.
Tick every line true in your factory.
Be honest. Nobody is watching. Each one you tick lights up the way the same moment runs on Prodman ERP, and adds what that problem is quietly costing you every year.
Buyer order and planning
The plan lives on the order, not in a file. A stage that slips gets flagged the day it slips.
The Gantt shows every confirmed order against real line capacity. A date you cannot meet shows up while you can still negotiate.
Tech pack, approvals, ratios, materials, stages and dispatch all hang off one record that anyone with permission can read.
Sampling and approvals
Lab dips, fit, size set, PP sample and trim approvals sit on the order with a status you can see at a glance.
The system enforces the approval check, not a merchant under date pressure.
Fabric and trims
Requirement from the order, purchase orders raised against dates, and supplier confirmations in writing on the portal.
Consumption per garment against actual godown balance, with a shortage flagged before the lay is spread.
Leftover fabric and trims are recorded at order close instead of being pushed to a corner of the store.
Cutting
Fabric issued to cutting and pieces produced are both captured, so consumption per garment is a real number.
Size-wise cut, bundled and sewn quantities are visible against the order ratio all the way through.
Sewing lines
The operator scans the bundle and enters produced and rejected. Line output, efficiency and WIP update on their own.
Every stage entry moves quantity forward, so what is lying where is visible without counting bundles.
Defects add up by line, operator and operation, so you see the pattern in days, not in opinions.
Stoppage hours add up per machine and per cause, all year.
Washing, embroidery and outsourced work
Sent quantity, received quantity and completion dates are confirmed by the vendor on the supplier portal.
Quantities out and in are recorded, so the gap shows up on the day of receipt.
Finishing, inspection and shipment
In-line and end-line checks catch the fault on the line and the shift that caused it, before the next 3,000 pieces are sewn the same way.
Every stage quantity is compared to the order quantity as the order runs, not at the end.
Size-wise, carton-wise packed quantities come off the same record the floor updated.
After the shipment
Fabric, trims, line hours, outsourced stages, rejects and freight roll into one order cost.
Tick the lines above to see what they cost you.
Assumes materials at 55% of turnover and a 12% net margin, the same assumptions as the ROI calculator, where you can change every one of them.
We set up every factory on site, by hand. That is why we take only a few each quarter.
Six months later
What a Monday morning looks like after that.
- One page in the morning shows every style, every stage and every line, without walking the floor.
- The eleven open approvals on a style are a list with owners and dates, not a search through WhatsApp.
- Bulk never gets cut on a style the buyer has not approved.
- Trims are ordered backwards from the sewing date, so lines stop waiting on a zip.
- Actual fabric consumption per garment is a number you compare to the costing, every style.
- A line running below target is caught the same day, not at the weekly meeting.
- The washing unit and the embroidery vendor confirm quantities in writing, on the day.
- The cut-to-ship gap is visible from week one, so air freight becomes rare instead of routine.
Straight answers
What owners ask us at this point.
We already have a system the buyer asked us to use. Does this clash?
No. Buyer portals track what you report to the buyer. This tracks what is actually happening on your floor, which is the part you need for your own decisions. Most units run both, and the reporting to the buyer gets easier because the numbers underneath are real.
Will operators on a sewing line really scan bundles?
Scan the bundle, scan the line, enter produced and rejected. That is the whole interaction and it takes seconds. We kept it short on purpose. Every system that asked a line operator to fill in forms has failed.
Our order quantities and styles change constantly. Can it keep up?
Changes are the normal case in export, so they are handled as changes on the order record, with a date and a name, rather than as a new spreadsheet. That trail is also what lets you go back to the buyer about a late change with evidence.
We are not a printing factory. Why does your site talk about printing?
Prodman was built and tested on a working print floor. The core does not care what you make. Ordered stages, machines, promised dates, materials, quality and dispatch are the same shape in an apparel unit. We configure your stages, your units and your paperwork.
How long does setup take?
We set up every factory on site, by hand, over a few weeks. We do this on purpose, and it is why we take only a few factories each quarter. Start before your next big season, not during it.
You should not need to spend your life walking the floor to discover the truth.
Bring us one problematic production order, one chronic bottleneck, or one metric nobody trusts. In thirty minutes, we will show you how Prodman restores order and calm, without asking your machine operators to become clerical typists.
Limited on-site implementations each quarter · Configured by hand