Fibre-to-Garment Cost Cascade with Compounding Stage Losses

The formula

This is the expression the tool evaluates. Every term is named underneath, with the unit it must be supplied in.

How the result is derived

Step by step, from the values you type to the figure on screen.

1. The 10 inputs are read from the form on every keystroke: Fibre Price, Spinning Yield, Spinning Conversion, Fabric Formation Yield, Knitting or Weaving Conversion, Dyeing & Finishing Yield, Dyeing & Finishing Conversion, Finished Garment Fabric Weight, Cutting Yield and Cut & Make.
2. Each value is checked against the accepted range in the input table below. A value outside its range stops the calculation rather than producing a misleading figure — the results blank out and a message appears.
3. The validated values are substituted into the expression above, which resolves Ex-Factory Cost per Garment together with every supporting figure in one pass — no value is carried over from a previous entry.
4. The supporting outputs — Fibre Drawn per Garment, Waste Multiplier, Cumulative Yield, Fibre in the Garment, Conversion & Making, Fibre Share of Cost, Cost of the Losses Alone and Cost Move per +10% Fibre — come from the same pass, so they always describe the same case as the headline figure.
5. Results are rounded for display only. The full-precision value is used throughout the chain, so reading a rounded intermediate figure back into the tool by hand can shift the last digit.

What each input means

Where to read each value on the floor, the unit it must be in, and the range the tool accepts.

What the tool returns

The headline figure and every supporting value it is built from.

Worked example

The tool loads with this case already solved — the Ex-Factory Cost per Garment shown above is its answer. Change one value and the difference from this baseline is the sensitivity of the result to that variable.

How to use it

1. Work through the input groups in order — Fibre, Fabric and Garment. The defaults are a realistic case, so you can change one value at a time and watch what moves.
2. There is no calculate button. Every figure recalculates as you type or drag, which is what makes this usable for a what-if sweep rather than a single answer.
3. Read Ex-Factory Cost per Garment in the dark results panel — that is the headline figure, expressed in per garment.
4. Check the supporting rows underneath (Fibre Drawn per Garment, Waste Multiplier, Cumulative Yield, Fibre in the Garment, Conversion & Making, Fibre Share of Cost, Cost of the Losses Alone and Cost Move per +10% Fibre) before acting on the headline — they are where an implausible input usually shows itself first.
5. Reset to defaults returns every field to the reference case, which is the quickest way to check whether a surprising result came from the tool or from an input you had changed earlier.

Where this is used

• Process planning — establishing Ex-Factory Cost per Garment before a trial is booked, so machine time and material in Commercial Costing & Advanced Textiles are committed against a calculated figure rather than an estimate.
• Costing and quotation — Ex-Factory Cost per Garment is an input to the cost sheet, and quoting from a worked number rather than a remembered one is what keeps a margin intact.
• Troubleshooting — when the floor result drifts from plan, entering the measured values (starting with Fibre Price) shows how much of the gap in Ex-Factory Cost per Garment each variable explains.
• Teaching and study — the accepted ranges bracket normal Commercial Costing & Advanced Textiles practice, so moving one variable at a time shows the shape of the relationship rather than a single answer.

Assumptions and limits

• Conversion costs here are charged on the mass ENTERING each stage, not the mass leaving it, which is the point of the tool: a factory pays to blow, card, knit and dye material that it later drops as noil, hard waste or an off-shade roll. Quotations that charge conversion on good output instead will read lower, and will keep reading lower right up until the year-end stock count. The cumulative yield is a product, not an average — the single most common costing error in the industry is to take four yields in the high eighties and reason as though the chain runs at about eighty-eight percent, when it runs at sixty-five. The sensitivity figure answers the merchandiser question directly: because fibre is only part of the cost, a ten percent fibre move does not move the quotation by ten percent, and knowing which fraction it does move is the difference between holding a price and losing a margin. Cut-and-make is per garment because that is how it is quoted and how it behaves; everything upstream is per kilogram because that is how it is bought.
• Every input is bounded to the range normal practice occupies (Fibre Price 0.05 to 200 per kg, Spinning Yield 40 to 100 % and Spinning Conversion 0 to 50 per kg in, and so on for the rest). Those bounds are guard rails against typing errors, not a claim that the formula fails one unit outside them.
• The calculation is deterministic: the same inputs always give the same result. It carries no allowance for machine condition, operator skill, ambient conditions or lot-to-lot material variation unless an input above explicitly represents one.
• Nothing is sent anywhere. The maths runs in your browser, so the numbers you type never leave the page.

Questions people ask