Track production by quantity, not checkboxes. Domestic cutting, sewing, bundling, finishing and receiving. Import from x-factory through customs to your warehouse, with ASN against vendor POs. Costing and BOM per stage, each stage assignable to its own contractor.
You cut a thousand. Six hundred came off the table clean and went to sewing. Four hundred are still waiting. Ask most systems where that cut ticket stands and they have to pick one answer, because all they hold is a date or a tick. AIMS360 holds a quantity at every stage where goods move, at style, color and size, so both facts are true at once and your delivery date is arithmetic instead of optimism.
It is knowing where goods are inside a production run, not just when the run started and when it is due. Every production record in AIMS360 already carries the basics: an issue date, a completion date, and an x-factory date on an import purchase order. That tells you a run exists and when you hope to see it.
Production tracking adds what happens in between. You define the steps your work passes through, and the ones that carry goods hold a quantity: how many units are cutting, how many are sewing, how many are on the water, how many cleared customs. The record is kept at style, color and size, so the question is never "is this cut done" but "how many mediums in navy are still in cutting, and where is everything else."
It attaches to all three ways AIMS360 creates work in process: cut tickets for cut and sew, production purchase orders for imported and full package goods, and garment dye jobs for print, dye and embellishment. Domestic and imported production run side by side, each on its own workflow, without one being flattened to fit the other.
This is the part that decides whether a production module survives contact with a real factory floor, and it is easy to miss on a feature list, because every system claims production tracking.
The question is what the system stores when goods move. A date tells you when something happened. A checkbox tells you it happened. Neither can tell you how much, and a run almost never moves as one block. Fabric relaxes late, one size runs short, a contractor takes half the bundles and comes back for the rest on Thursday.
| What the system stores | What you can answer | What you cannot |
|---|---|---|
| A date per step | When a step started or was marked finished | How many units it applied to, or what is still sitting there |
| A checkbox or status per step | That a step is done, or not done. Fine for an approval, wrong for a cut | Anything about a run that is half done, which is most runs most of the time |
| A quantity per step, by style, color and size | How many units are at each stage right now, which sizes are behind, what you can honestly promise a buyer | Nothing about the position, though it is only as current as the last person to record a move |
In AIMS360 you move the quantity that actually finished. Six hundred go to sewing, four hundred stay in cutting, and both positions are held per size. When the rest finish on Thursday you move them too. Nothing is rounded, nothing is assumed, and the work in process figure feeding your available to sell stays honest.
A production template holds both. Gates are approvals and confirmations where nothing physical moves. Stages are where the goods are. Using the right shape for each is what separates a board you can trust from a board that looks tidy.
Every gate on those cards is a step you name yourself. It carries an owner, a due date, a priority and a reminder that fires the day it opens, and later steps can depend on it, which is why cutting on CT-4471 could not begin until marker, grading and materials had all cleared. Gates can run in parallel with each other and with production, so a fitting and a first cut are not fighting for the same lane.
The distinction is the whole point. Ticking a fit approval is right, because a fitting is either approved or it is not. Ticking a cut of a thousand units is a guess. A system that uses one shape for both is only ever telling you the truth about half your board, and it will be the half that does not matter when a buyer calls.
Both jobs above are illustrative rather than customer data, and every step name is an example. Your own templates decide what the steps are called, how many there are, which ones carry goods and what depends on what.
The classic cut and sew run, whether it happens in your own shop or across four contractors in a ten block radius.
| Stage | What is happening | What the stage carries |
|---|---|---|
| Cutting | Markers laid, fabric spread and cut. | Usually where the fabric bill of materials is issued, plus cutting labor if it is charged. |
| Bundling | Cut pieces sorted and tied into bundles by size and lot. | The point where quantities per size become visible, and where shortages surface early. |
| Sewing | Bundles go to the sewing floor or out to a contractor. | Its own vendor and rate, or the labor cost held on the style. Trims can be issued here. |
| Finishing | Pressing, trimming, tagging, packing. | Its own vendor and cost, often a different shop from sewing. |
| Receiving | Finished units arrive at your warehouse. | Quantities per size into inventory, with damages recorded separately rather than quietly absorbed. |
Alongside these sit the gates that move no goods but hold up everything if they slip: RFQs, contractor approvals, first fitting, pattern approval, marker and grading sign-off, material confirmation. Those run as notification steps, in parallel, with a task assigned to whoever owns them. A run cannot reach cutting until they clear, which is the point of putting them on the same board.
For imported goods the stages are not operations, they are geography. Same mechanic, same quantities, different names.
| Stage | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| In production | The factory is making the goods. The x-factory date says when they are due to leave. |
| On boat or air | Shipped. This is where the advance ship notice lands and where a container reference gets attached. |
| In customs | Arrived at port, clearing. Where delays turn into missed ship windows if nobody is watching. |
| On transport | Cleared and moving inland to your warehouse or your 3PL. |
| Received | Counted in against the purchase order, per size, into inventory. |
An advance ship notice is the supplier telling you what is coming before it arrives: container number, carrier, expected arrival, and the style, color, size and quantity in the box. In AIMS360 that lands against the vendor purchase order the goods were ordered on, and production tracking is what carries it.
When the container actually sails, the in transit stage is updated with the date it happened, not the date someone hoped for. Everything downstream reforecasts from there.
ASN documents, packing lists and invoice references attach to the production job itself, so the person receiving the container is looking at the same file as the person who placed the order.
Goods are received per size against the job. What the ASN promised and what the warehouse counted are compared on the same record, and shortages surface at the dock rather than at month end.
Damaged units are received as damages and routed to a damages warehouse or a damaged style, so your sellable inventory is not quietly carrying goods nobody can ship.
ASN support is not limited to imports. The same mechanic works against cut tickets and other production, which matters when a contractor ships back in stages rather than all at once.
There is no fixed list, because no two apparel operations run the same way. You build templates, and each production type can have its own.
As many as your production needs, in the order it runs. A denim brand with a wash house has different steps from a knitwear brand with a linking operation, and neither should have to pretend otherwise.
A step either tracks quantity or it does not. Cutting and sewing do. An RFQ, a contractor approval, a fitting or a sample sign-off do not, so they run as notification steps and simply clear.
Cutting cannot start until pattern, grading and materials are confirmed. Sewing cannot start until cutting finishes. The template enforces the order so nobody skips a step to make a board look good.
Each step carries its own contractor, or none at all when the work goes to whoever has capacity that week. A run cut here, sewn there and washed somewhere else stays one visible thread.
Any step can carry a task assigned to a named person with a due date, a priority and a reminder, sent on the day that operation starts. Fit approvals stop living in somebody's inbox.
Materials are rarely consumed all at once. Flag the step that issues fabric and the step that issues trims, and the bill of materials relieves at the point it is really used.
Templates then attach to styles, either by assigning styles to the template or by setting the template on the style in manufactured costing. Styles attach at the color level, and once attached AIMS360 suggests the right template when production is created.
Templates are yours to build, so there is no correct answer here. These are six shapes that come up often in apparel, each with the gates that hold it up and the stages that carry goods. Borrow one whole, cut it down, or use it as the starting point in implementation.
Notice how little those six have in common. A knit program has no cutting step. A full package import issues no bill of materials. A development template counts nothing at all. That is the argument for templates you build rather than stages a vendor picked for you, and it is worth an hour in implementation to get right, because the template is the shape every report afterward inherits.
Each stage can carry its own cost, so a garment's cost is assembled from the operations that made it rather than dropped in as one blended number at the end. Cutting carries its labor and the fabric it consumed. Sewing carries its contractor rate and the trims issued there. Finishing carries the press and pack charge.
| What a stage can carry | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| A rate for the operation | Entered on the stage, or pulled from the labor section of the style master when the operation is costed there. |
| The materials it consumes | The bill of materials, issued at whichever stage actually uses it rather than all at the top of the run. |
| The vendor doing it | The contractor assigned to that step, so spend by contractor is a report rather than a reconstruction. |
| Estimated and actual dates | Both, per step, which is what turns a schedule into a measurement of how long things really take. |
The payoff shows up when a style comes in over cost and somebody asks where. With costing at the run level the honest answer is a shrug. With costing at the stage level you can see that sewing came in fine and finishing did not, which is a conversation you can have with a specific contractor about a specific number.
A time and action calendar is how apparel has always planned production: every step of a style listed with a planned date and an actual date, worked backward from the delivery. It is usually a spreadsheet that is accurate on the day it was built and stale a week later, because nothing underneath it is connected to the goods.
AIMS360 has a Time and Action view built on the tracking itself, alongside production job reports and the production views. Because the underlying record is a quantity per stage rather than a typed date, the calendar reflects what the floor reported rather than what the plan said. Views can be rearranged, columns fixed, and anything exported to Excel for the people who will want it in Excel regardless.
Worth knowing before a demo, because these come up and the answer should not be a surprise.
Moving goods between stages is a person recording what happened. There is no automatic flow, because there is no reliable way to guess when a bundle left a table. Brands with someone owning production get a lot from this. Brands without one are better served by the issue and completion dates every production record already carries.
You can put RFQ sent, quotes received and contractor approved on the board as gates, with owners and due dates, and cutting will not start until they clear. What AIMS360 does not do is send the RFQ, collect the bids or score them. It records that the step happened, not the negotiation behind it.
No machine or line scheduling, no capacity calculations, no telling you which operator is free. It tracks where goods are and what they cost, not how to sequence a sewing floor.
No patternmaking, no grading engine, no artwork. AIMS360 stores tech pack files and builds the tech pack bill of materials on the style, but the design work happens in the tools built for it.
Templates also take real setup. They are configured to your workflow, usually with implementation or support help, which is a week of thinking about how your production actually runs. Worth doing on purpose rather than discovering later.
What brands and manufacturers ask before they turn this on.
Recording where goods are inside a production run rather than only when the run started and when it is due. In AIMS360 that record is a quantity at each stage, held at style, color and size level, so you can see that 600 units are in sewing while 400 are still in cutting.
By quantity, for the steps where goods move. Each move records how many units went from one stage to the next, at style, color and size level, so a run can be split across several stages at once. Approval steps where nothing physical moves are recorded as done or not done, which is the honest answer for those. Systems that use a single checkbox for every step have to pick one answer for a whole run, which stops being true the moment a run splits.
Yes, as notification steps. A template can include steps that move no goods at all: an RFQ sent, a contractor approved, a first fitting, pattern and grading sign-off, materials confirmed, a pre-production sample approved. Each can carry a task assigned to a named person with a due date, priority and reminder, and production steps can depend on them, so cutting will not start until they clear. AIMS360 records that these steps happened. It does not send the RFQ or compare the bids for you.
It depends on what you make, which is why templates are built rather than chosen. A domestic cut and sew run typically goes cutting, bundling, sewing, finishing, received. An import runs in production, on boat or air, in customs, on transport, received. Denim adds a wash stage between sewing and finishing. Knitwear replaces cutting entirely with knitting and linking. Decorated blanks run decorate, QC, received on a garment dye job. A development template can be almost all approval gates with nothing to count at all.
They are one system. The bill of materials lives on the style and drives costing and purchasing. Cut tickets, production purchase orders and garment dye jobs consume it and carry production tracking. Customer orders can be allocated against that production, and the finished units land in the same inventory those orders ship from. Nothing is re-keyed between the three.
It gives you the visibility planning depends on rather than compressing lead times by itself. Each stage carries an estimated date and an actual date, so you can see which stage a run is sitting in, how long stages are really taking against plan, and which vendors run late. That is what makes a delivery date a forecast instead of a hope.
Whatever your work actually passes through, because templates are yours to define. Domestic runs commonly use cutting, sewing, bundling, finishing and receiving. Imports commonly use production, on boat or air, in customs and on transport. Decoration adds print, dye, launder and QC. Approval steps such as RFQs, fittings and sign-offs run alongside as notification items.
Yes. Each stage carries its own vendor, so a run cut in one place, sewn in another and finished in a third stays visible across all three. A stage can also be left without a preferred vendor when the work goes to whichever contractor has capacity.
Yes. A stage can carry its own rate, or pull the labor cost from the style master, and can issue a bill of materials at the point that stage consumes materials. So cutting can carry its labor and the fabric it consumed while sewing carries its own rate and trims, instead of one blended number for the whole run.
Production tracking runs on the vendor purchase order. When the supplier sends an advance ship notice, the in transit stage is updated with its actual date and the ASN documents are attached to the production job. Goods are then received per size against the job, with damages routed to a damages warehouse or damaged style. Container references can be carried on the tracking.
All three production types. Cut tickets for cut and sew work, production purchase orders for imported and full package goods, and garment dye jobs for print, dye and embellishment. Each can carry its own tracking template, so domestic and imported production run side by side without one flattening into the other.
Notification steps can, unless a dependency stops them, so fittings and approvals happen alongside everything else. Production stages that track goods cannot hold the same units twice, because a unit is either in cutting or in sewing. Different units can be in different stages at the same time, which is the point of tracking by quantity.
No. AIMS360 does not schedule machines or lines, does not calculate factory capacity, and does not do design, patternmaking or CAD. It tracks where goods are, what they cost and what they are committed to. Machine level scheduling and design work stay in the tools built for them.
Enough to be worth doing deliberately. Templates are configured to your workflow, usually with AIMS360 implementation or support assistance, and moving goods between stages is a manual entry rather than an automatic flow. Brands with a production person updating stages get a great deal from it. Brands without one are usually better served by the basic issue and completion dates every production record already carries.
Last reviewed 19 August 2026 by the AIMS360 team. AIMS360 capabilities described here, including quantity based tracking at style, color and size level with partial moves between stages, notification steps for approvals and sign-offs carrying tasks with owners, due dates, priorities and reminders, user built templates with dependencies, per stage vendors, rates and bill of materials issue points, ASN handling against vendor purchase orders with documents attached to the production job, receiving per size with damages routed separately, container references, and the Time and Action and production job views, reflect the production tracking workflow as documented in the AIMS360 support knowledge base. The six example workflows and all step names are illustrative starting points, not fixed options; templates are defined by each brand. The CT-4471 and PO-2210 jobs and the 1,000 unit example are illustrative arithmetic, not customer data. Your own configuration is set during implementation.
The one that shipped late, where nobody could say which step it was stuck in. We will build the template for it, gates and stages both, split the quantities the way it really happened, and show you what you would have seen at the time.
