What is a Cutting Room in the Garment Industry?

Cutting department


In a garment factory, the cutting room is a section or department that cuts fabrics following standard methods. To make readymade garments different components are cut from the textile fabrics using industrial equipment. In mass production, a garment factory needs to cut thousands of garments every day.

In the industrial production environment, a separate department is set up for cutting activities on the same floor with production or on a different floor in a multi-storied building. The cutting room is headed by a cutting manager (or cutting room in-charge) who normally works under the production manager of a garment factory.

Fabric is a costly item compared to other materials used for making garments. So, to avoid wastage of fabrics, the cutting room takes preventive actions in marker planning, marker making, and accurate cutting.

The cutting room is equipped with long and wide cutting tables, cutting equipment, spreading machines, racks for fabric storing, and tables for handling cut parts (sorting, bundling, and ply numbering activities). To know more about the cutting room, read the cutting process chart and cutting room workflow. Also, read our pdf eBook on the garment-cutting processes

In the factory layout, a cutting room is set up near the fabric store to reduce material transportation.

The cutting room plays a key role in cutting garments as orders may contain different sizes and different colors. In some garment designs, with the multiple color combo, various types of fabrics and trims are used. Cutting departments manage the cutting and bundling of all the components to avoid mistakes in the stitching process.

In big companies where a company has multiple production units, they used to set up a centralized cutting room. After cutting the fabrics for various orders, cutting bundles (cut parts) are sent to the production units where stitching processes are done. To utilize the machinery and manpower and for many other benefits, big companies prefer centralized cutting rooms. Even for production job-work, fabric cutting is done in the cutting room of the garment exporters.   

Prasanta Sarkar

Prasanta Sarkar is a textile engineer and a postgraduate in fashion technology from NIFT, New Delhi, India. He has authored 6 books in the field of garment manufacturing technology, garment business setup, and industrial engineering. He loves writing how-to guide articles in the fashion industry niche. He has been working in the apparel manufacturing industry since 2006. He has visited garment factories in many countries and implemented process improvement projects in numerous garment units in different continents including Asia, Europe, and South Africa. He is the founder and editor of the Online Clothing Study Blog.

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