How to Make WIP Report in Garment Production?

Selim Reza

8 Nov, 2025

How to Make WIP Report in Garment Production

Step-by-Step Guide to Making a WIP (Work in Progress) Report in Garment Production for Better Line Control and Efficiency

In today’s competitive apparel industry, data-driven production management has become essential — especially for factories producing high-fashion garments for international markets. Unlike basic knitwear or denim, high-fashion styles often demand intensive manual work, intricate detailing, and multiple hand-repairing and alteration processes.

In many garment factories, manual record keeping is still a common practice. For example, some factories maintain handwritten logs for every repaired piece—recording who performed the hand-repair, when the piece was issued, and when the repair was completed.

While this method helps track individual activities, it fails to provide a real-time view of WIP (Work in Progress) across different processes. As a result, managers cannot see how many pieces are currently under repair, in sewing, or waiting for finishing at any given moment.

To solve this, I am working on developing a WIP report system that will replace the manual piece-wise recording with a more efficient, digital process. This new system will allow the factory to monitor production flow more accurately and instantly view the WIP status of each process.

During my discussion with the factory manager, I discovered several practical insights about how they currently manage and record production data. I’ll be sharing those learnings and steps here in this post as I design the WIP report.

Production WIP (Work in Progress) refers to the total quantity of work that is currently under process within the production area.

For example, when we talk about Sewing Line WIP, it represents the total number of semi-stitched or unfinished garments that are currently in the sewing line. These are the garment pieces that have been loaded into the line but have not yet been completed or come out as finished products.

In simple terms, WIP in a sewing line means all garment components that are in-progress, spread across various workstations—from the first operation to the last one in the production line.

Tracking WIP is essential for understanding the production flow, bottlenecks, and efficiency of a garment factory.

In one of my earlier posts, I shared how to calculate WIP (Work in Progress) levels in the cutting, sewing, and finishing sections using the following formulas:

Cutting WIP = Total cut quantity – Total quantity sent to sewing
Sewing Line WIP = Total pieces loaded to the line – Total pieces completed
Finishing Room WIP = Total pieces received from sewing – Total pieces packed

Technically, the above formulas are correct. However, there’s one important limitation — the timeline is not defined.

For example:
When we say “Total pieces loaded to the line”, the question arises — since when are we counting this data?

Is it for today’s production?
Is it week-to-date?
Or month-to-date?

If you consider week-to-date data, that means at the start of every week, you would need to complete all garments and make the line WIP zero — which is practically impossible in a continuous production system. Garment lines rarely start or finish styles cleanly within a week or a month.

So, how do we accurately measure WIP in a real factory environment?

Let’s understand the right approach and formula to measure WIP in garment production processes in the next section.

To monitor and control production effectively, every garment factory needs a consistent and practical method for calculating Work in Progress (WIP).

In the sewing line, WIP should be calculated using the following formula:

$Sewing Line WIP$

$\textbf{Sewing Line WIP} = (\text{Total Garments Loaded Today} + \text{Previous Day’s Balance WIP}) - \text{Today’s Line Output}$

Sewing Line WIP=(Total Garments Loaded Today+ Previous Day’s Balance WIP)−Today’s Line Output

Data Required for WIP Calculation

To calculate WIP for any selected date, you need to record three key data points:

Production Loading Quantity – Number of pieces loaded into the line today
Production Output Quantity – Number of pieces completed today
Previous Day’s WIP Quantity – The balance of unfinished garments carried forward from the previous day

The same formula can be applied to other sections as well:

Cutting Section WIP
Sewing Section WIP
Finishing Section WIP

Daily WIP Tracking Method

The production recorders can maintain a simple daybook or spreadsheet where the previous day’s WIP acts as the opening balance for the next day.
At the end of each day, the closing WIP is updated and carried forward to the following day’s report.

This method helps maintain continuous visibility of work under process, ensuring that no stage in the production line is overloaded or idle.

From Manual Records to Automated WIP Reporting

While maintaining physical registers is fine for day-to-day recordkeeping, it falls short when it comes to data analysis, trend tracking, and management reporting.

A modern factory should implement a digital or automated WIP reporting system that:

Updates WIP data in real time
Reduces manual errors
Allows managers to view WIP levels at any moment
Improves decision-making and production planning

WIP Report and WIP Report Template

A WIP (Work in Progress) Report helps production teams and management monitor the quantity of garments currently under process in each production section. It provides a clear picture of the flow of work across cutting, sewing, and finishing departments and highlights where bottlenecks may exist.

In the sample WIP report template shown above, both cutting section WIP and sewing section WIP are included. The report can also display the till-date total production quantity, although this field is optional depending on how detailed you want your report to be.

If your production data is stored in an SQL database, you can easily fetch real-time data and generate a dynamic WIP report using tools like Excel Pivot Tables or Power BI. This allows you to analyze production progress, compare WIP levels by process, and identify inefficiencies instantly.

Important Note

Excess WIP at any process or workstation is not a good sign for production efficiency. It usually indicates a bottleneck or imbalance between operations, leading to: