How to Make Garment Inspection Report - Simple Method and

Advanced Method
If you are already working in garment production, you might know that garments are inspected at various
stages in the manufacturing process. Common Inspection stages practised by garment factories have
been explained in this article.

In this post, I will show you how to make quality inspection reports for the manufacturing process. Here
the term 'Garment Inspection' means all kind of garment checking other than final shipment inspection.

The simple steps involved in making quality inspection reports

1. Design quality inspection format(s)

2. Record quality inspection data while inspecting goods - online or off the line
3. Analyse data and make a summary of the reports

Do you use minimum formats to record inspection findings? I hope you do. Otherwise, you were not
reading this post.

Let come to the main topic. How to make garment checking report (inspection report)? In this post, I have
explained simple to the complex form of data collection and report making. Use one that matches your
requirement and follow the procedure.

Also Read: How to Inspect Garments?

Garment Inspection is a common task in garment manufacturing. Do you like to know how garment
inspection is done by factories those makes export garments? Read this post to learn it.

Checkers and auditors inspect garments at the end of a line, in finishing and in various audit stages. All
do garment inspection but not the right procedure. An effective inspection procedure would help you to
increase the quality of the inspection job as well as productivity on this task.
In this article, a standard method of garment checking has been explained step by step. A Polo shirt has
been taken for example. Inspection of a garment is done in a clockwise direction as shown in the
following figure.

1. First, check appearance by holding the garment at shoulder points. Examine the front and back of
the garment.

2. Lay the garment flat on the audit table. Check for garment details.

3. Open and check center front opening.

4. Inspect inside and outside of the collar and Neck. Inspect inside shoulder seams

5. Fold garment forward at the shoulder and check back neck.

6. Check the tension of the neck seam. Stretch out to full extent.

7. Inspect left shoulder seam. Inspect left armhole seam.

8. Fold left sleeve across the front of the garment. Inspect left back armhole. Check for shading.

9. Inspect left sleeve cuff outside and inside. Check the tension of the left cuff seam. Stretch out to
full extent.

10. Inspect the left underarm. Inspect the left side seam.

11. Check the tension of the left underarm seam. Check the tension of left side seam.

12. Inspect bottom outside and inside, front and back.

13. Check the tension of the bottom hem. Stretch out the bottom to a full extent.

14. Inspect right side seam. Inspect right underarm.

15. Check the tension of the right side seam. Check the tension of right underarm seam

16. Inspect right sleeve cuff outside and inside. Check the tension of right sleeve cuff. Stretch out to
full extent.

17. Fold right sleeve across the front of the garment. Inspect right back armhole. Check for shading.

18. Inspect right armhole seam. Inspect right shoulder seam.

19. Turn garment over. Lay garment flat on the audit table. Examine style details and examine
uncheck seam on the back.

20. Turn garment inside out. Lay garment flat on the audit table. Inspect for obvious defects. Examine
unchecked seams on the inside.
The above steps can be used for other garment products by covering product specific quality
requirements. The origin of this article is the Adidas quality manual.
What are Defect and Defective Pieces and How these are measured?
The parameter that decides whether a garment is a quality garment or not is called a Defect. When a
number of defects in a garment is high it seemed as worse quality garment and when defects are less
then it is a better quality garment. Definition of the defect and defective pieces has been explained below.

Defects in a defective garment

Defects
Defects are all those non-conformance that is not acceptable by the end customer. Like the imbalanced
shape of the garment, broken button or other trims, holes in fabrics, slip stitch, broken seam etc. In a
defective garment, there may be more than one defect.

Defective Pieces
Defective pieces are those pieces, which are separated for alteration during checking may be for any
causes.

For the quantitative measure, there are two measuring units as Defects per hundred units and percentage
defective.

Defects per hundred units (DHU) – number of total defects in 100 checked garments. The formula for
calculating DHU is

DHU = Total no. of defects found X 100 / Total

pieces checked
Percent Defective (%) – total number of defective pieces in 100 checked garments.

Percentage defective = Total no. of defective

pieces X 100 / Total pieces checked
Example: Suppose in a day one table checker checked 200 pieces. He found total of 15 defective pieces
and in those 15 pieces total 60 defects were found. So, the quality measure of that lot in terms of DHU is
30 (60*100/200) and Percentage Defective is 7.5%.

Also Read: How to make garment inspection report – Simple Method and Advance Method

Also Read: Making an Inspection Report:

Making an Inspection Report
First, define what is the purpose of making a quality inspection report in your factory. Then according to
the information required you have to design inspection format. For your information, common quality
measures are Percentage Defective of garments in a production lot, DHU etc.

Your objective of garment inspection might be one of the followings. Method of making inspection report
explained accordingly.

1. Do you like to know how much Defective Garments are made in the last production day? Use
the simple method -1.

Simple Method - 1:
To measure percentage defectives of a garment lot you need to follow the below procedure. A sample
format is shown in the following for data collection.

 Employ one quality checker at the end of the line (at the end of the process). Checker needs to
check 100% garments coming out from the line.

 Record total number of pieces checked by the checker during the day

 Record total defective (including rejected garments) garments kept aside while checking garments.

 Calculate percentage defective garment in the production lot.

Defective Percentage = (Number of defective garments X 100/Number of total garments checked)

Figure-1: Quality Inspection data collection format

2. Do you need to know how many Defects are produced by your tailors? Follow the simple
method -2

Simple Method -2.

To measure total number of defects or Defect per Hundred Units (DHU) of a garment lot you need to
follow below procedure. A sample format is shown in the following for data collection.

 Make the format as Figure-2 for data capturing.


 Record numbers of defects found in checked garments. You can extend this format for recording
number of defects for defect wise.

 Sum up total pieces checked and total defects found in those checked pieces.

 Calculate Defects per Hundred Units (DHU).


DHU = (Totals defects found X 100) / Total pieces

checked

Figure-2: Quality Inspection data collection format

3. Do you like to make measurement checking report? Follow simple method-3.

Simple Method -3: Measurement Checking

Garment measurement checking is required to ensure the fit of the garment. For measurement checking
use following procedure.

 Design format with a list of measurement points, size-wise measurement specified by

buyer/designer, allowance (+/-).

 Record actual measurements while you are checking garment measurements.

 Verify actual measurement with buyer specified measurements and tolerance level.

 Comment on the report.

Also Read: How to Measure DHU?

What is DHU? How to measure DHU?

Question:
Want to know more about DHU in quality control. Can you please elaborate this term?

Answer:
There are two common quality measures used in garment manufacturing
 Number of defects and
 Number of defective garments found in inspected garments

To understand DHU, first, you have to know the term 'defects' in garments and 'defective garment'. To
many people, these two terms are not completely clear. The terms defect and defective have been
explained here.

In garment production processes, quality checking stations are set for stopping defects at the source and
stopping defective garment passing to the following processes. Normally, checking is done for raw
materials, partially stitched garments, stitched garments and finished garments by quality checkers.

In checking, quality checker detects defects in garments and separate defective garments from good
pieces. Where there is established quality system, quality checker records the total number of defects
found in the garments checked by her/him in a day and also she/he records the number of defective
garments where those defects are found. Quality checking records are summarized and the result is
presented in DHU.

What is DHU?
DHU stands for Defect per Hundred Units. It means a number of defects found or detected per 100
garments. This is also known as DPHU (Defects Per Hundred Units).

DHU value is calculated using the following formula.

Defects per hundred units = (Total defects found *

100)/Total garments inspected
An example: Assume that a finishing checker checked 250 garments in a day. Checker found 20
defective garments and he recorded 35 defects in those defective pieces. What is the DHU of finishing
the process?

Solution: By using the above formula DHU of the finishing goods is = (35 * 100/250) = 14

How to measure DHU?

To measure DHU of any process, one needs to record a number of total pieces checked and the number
of total defects is detected in the inspected garments. It is a number of defects, not the defective
garments. One defective garment may have more than one defect. Like a checker found broken stitch, a
hole and raw edges in a shirt. Here checker found one defective shirt but the defective shirt contains 3
defects.

Once you have a record of the following information of a lot you can measure DHU of that lot using the
above formula.
1. Total pieces inspected
2. Total defects found in those inspected pieces
The following table can be used for data capturing during the garment inspection.

Also Read: Standard measuring positions for apparel products and measurement inspection
Procedure.

4. Want to know what are the major defects in a garment lot? And like to find DHU and Defective
percentage data in a single format? Follow the advanced method.

Advanced Method.
Read the following procedure and implement it.
 Design detailed data collection format - it should include defects categories, total defects, total
defective pieces, accepted pieces etc.

 While checking garments (stitching division) record defects found under defect categories, record
total defective pieces found.

 Sum up number of defects in each defect categories and calculate total defects.

 Calculate DHU and Percentage Defective of the inspected garment lot.

 List down defects in descending order of number of defect found. You can also make bar graph
(Pareto chart) with total defects in each categories. See following figure-3 for example of Pareto
chart.

Fig-3: Pareto of Sewing defects

Conclusion:
The actual fact - many garment manufacturers fill complex inspection format. But they don't make any
inspection report and don't draw any conclusion from the collected data. It is also important to summarize
the report, otherwise, no action and decision can be taken at post-inspection.

There is a big difference between recording on a blank inspection form and making a quality report. A
filled format says nothing if collected data is not summarized, comments and action plan are written at the
end of the inspection report. Mention clearly what action to be taken by the production team and quality
controller based on the product quality report summary. Like, if it is in-process checking mention what
errors are frequently happening? If it is final inspection or audit mention whether an audit is
Passed/Failed/ need to be rechecked.

You can use inspection report data in many ways. You can go deeper and dig down more about defects
generation with the facts that you have collected in the above inspection reports. You can even track the
reasons for occurring particular defect.

To find the root cause of defect generation use problem-solving tools like
 Fish Bone Diagram or 5 Why 
The 5WHY – A Simple Process to Understand any Problem
(Root cause analysis)
It is often thought that a concept such as LEAN needs either extensive studies or training to be any good
at it. So we leave it to so called consultants to come and teach and train us on lean management and
lean principles. While consultants can certainly help with their extensive knowledge and training on the
subject, we don’t necessarily have to wait for somebody to teach us on the basic principles and basic
tools of lean to start benefiting from it.

The purpose of this article and few more to follow over the next few weeks are to remind you that, as a
manager/ supervisor you already know most of the lean tools and how to use them. One of such tool is
called 5 WHYS.

5 WHYS is one the easiest and fundamentally most important tool we use in Lean Management. It is
often the case that when we do things, things go wrong. It’s normal and if things don’t go wrong there is
something not normal with that setup. When things go wrong it is the duty of the supervisor/ manager to
resolve the issue and set things right as quickly as possible. However, it is equally important to
understand why the mistake or bottleneck happened and take necessary measures to eliminate or
drastically reduce the recurrence of the same issue again. In management studies & in LEAN we called
this procedure ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS. Sounds bit fancy but it is nothing but digging in to the issue
and try to understand why it happened.

So what is 5WHY. It is simply asking WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY and chances are when you are in
your fifth why, you should be beginning to understand WHY things went wrong. But in any means 5
WHYS don’t limit your questioning of whys to just 5 times, though often 5 times is enough to figure out the
issue.

It is well noted that most problems have several layers attached on top of each other. During the 5WHY
route cause analysis you’re simply peeling away each layer to get in to the core of the issue which we
called fundamental cause for the problem or trigger point. Without getting to the core issue, it is practically
impossible to eliminate the issue or guarantee that it won’t happen again. Sometimes we may find we do
not have an answer to the issue but at least now we know what’s causing it so we could keep sufficient
allowances to compensate the delays or other impact to the operation.

5 WHY Process
Depending on the nature of the problem you can do this 5 WHY analysis in a formal way or informal way.
The formal way to do the analysis is as follows:-
1. Gather the team to a one place.
2. Identify the problem and write a problem statement.
3. Ask the first WHY the problem happened and write down the answer.
4. Ask the second WHY and write down the answer. Now relate the answer to the first why and see
any relation or correlations there.
Repeat the same until team agrees on the core issue to the identified problem in the problem statement.

5 why process flow chart

Example#1:
Let’s take an example to see how 5 WHY can be used in a practical situation. Absenteeism is one of the
biggest problems in the apparel industry. This causes many headaches not only to factory manager in the
manufacturing plant but everybody across the supply chain, including the buyer. But unfortunately this is a
least explored area in many apparel companies in South Asia. Some companies get around this issue by
having number of few ‘jumpers’ who are multi skilled operators who could replace absentees. But this is a
costly exercise and most cases not practical as in some factories absenteeism rate is high as 6-8%.

During one of the projects we identified absenteeism is particularly bad in one of the factories and most of
the measures HR came up with not working. Some of the measures were taken was to give high
monetary bonus for attendance and gifts for the best attendance. Still the issue persists.

So we took few employees along with the HR manager & factory manager and used 5WHY.

1. Why were you absent yesterday?

(a) Machine operator -I had to go to a parent teacher meeting
of my son’s school.

2. Why didn’t you inform the manager?

(a) Machine operator - No point because he always says no
as we have urgent shipments. So when we need we just take
it.

3. Why you always says NO?

(a) Factory Manager – I am always short of operators and we
have an urgent shipment this weekend.

4. Why you don’t have a system in place to resolve these

issues?
(a) HR Manager – I didn’t know factory manager says
NO all the time. Nobody told me that before.
At this stage, to highlight the issue we could ask additional question from the management such as ‘don’t
you think teacher parent meeting is important and the operator had to attend?’ This is to highlight the
importance of the issue and remind them their responsibilities and importance of having a system to
obtain leaves with prior approval without refusing every request regardless of the reason.

Also by knowing how many operators going to be absent on a particular day or a week gives the
opportunity to the manager to plan ahead with the minimum impact to the production.

So in above example, as result of 5WHY route cause analysis company identified the fundamental HR
management issue they had for a long time and caused so many disruptions to their operations. After the
analysis their absenteeism went down to 3-4% within a month which was a huge improvement.
Example#2:
Let’s look at another common occurrence in a manufacturing floor. Daily production target supposed to be
1000 pieces. However, actual output is 890 pieces. Let’s do a route cause analysis to diagnose the issue.

1. Why the daily target not achieved?

(a) Line supervisor – We ran out of thread & we had to rewind
the thread to get the number of cones needed. Specially for 5
thread overlock machines.

2. Why did we ran out of thread?

(a) Production Manager - It seems thread consumption was
taken wrong.

3. Why we got wrong consumption?

(a) Merchandiser – I measured the thread consumption manually. I
thought I got it right. It seems there was a mistake somewhere.
Sorry.

As a result of above route cause analysis, management realize the importance of having a standardize
system to calculate thread consumption and making sure merchandiser reconfirm the accuracy of
consumption with the relevant line supervisor on first day of the production. This will help to order
shortage or stop ordering additional qty for future deliveries.