5 Key Steps: How to Get the Best Cutting Order Planning for Your Fashion Manufacturing Process

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Cutting order planning (COP) is a critical process in fashion manufacturing that helps optimize fabric usage, reduce waste, all while improving sustainability and production efficiency across the cutting room, allowing fashion brands to streamline production processes and simplify once complex, manual tasks. 

Why COP is the hidden engine of fashion manufacturing

In today’s constantly-evolving fashion industry, where speed, precision, and sustainability have become non-negotiable, the cutting room plays a central role. Yet, many brands and manufacturers still rely on outdated, manual processes to plan their cutting operations. This can lead to fabric waste, production delays, and missed delivery windows. 

According to McKinsey’s State of Fashion 2025, companies that digitize their production planning can reduce lead times by up to 30% and cut material waste by 20%. 

Cutting order planning is the process of transforming product orders into optimized cutting instructions. This ensures that the right quantity of fabric is used, at the right time, on the right equipment — all while minimizing waste and maximizing throughput. 

Step 1. Centralizing product and material data: build a solid foundation

To build a reliable cutting order planning process, you need: 

• A centralized product catalog with all size variants, technical specifications, and style codes; 

• A material library that includes fabric types, widths, shrinkage rates, and cutting constraints; 

• Clear associations between products and materials. 

Valia Fashion’s Product Manager and Material Manager, part of Lectra’s intelligent digital platform for fashion, modules allow you to digitize and manage this data in a single, cloud-based environment that is accessible to all stakeholders in real-time. 

 A centralized data system reduces manual entry errors by up to 80% and accelerates order preparation by 30%. 

Step 2. Estimating fabric consumption accurately: say goodbye to guesswork

Fabric is one of the most expensive resources in fashion manufacturing. Overestimating can lead to excess inventories and avoidable waste, while underestimating causes delays and reorders. 

Modern cutting order planning requires automated, intelligent estimation that accounts for: 

• Size ratios and order quantities; 

• Fabric characteristics (stretch, directionality, defects); 

• Nesting rules and marker efficiency; 

• Cutting constraints (single-ply vs. multi-ply). 

Valia Fashion Estimate uses AI and historical data to simulate cutting scenarios and generate precise fabric yield estimates. 

Step 3. Automating production rules: let the system do the thinking

Manual planning is time-consuming, inconsistent, and difficult to scale — especially across multiple sites or product lines. 

With a rule-based system, you can: 

• Define which cutting lines handle which product types; 

• Prioritize urgent or high-margin orders; 

• Allocate jobs based on machine availability and operator skill; 

• Apply different rules for different fabrics or production models. 

Valia Fashion’s System Manager allows you to configure these rules once and apply them automatically to every new order. 

Companies that automate production rules report up to 40% reduction in planning time and 20% fewer production errors. 

Step 4. Planning cutting orders with agility: adapt to any volume, any time

Whether you're producing a limited capsule collection or a large seasonal drop, your cutting order planning system must be able to instantly adapt. 

A robust planning system should allow you to: 

• Consolidate orders by fabric, size, and delivery date; 

• Optimize marker efficiency across multiple orders; 

• Balance workloads across machines and shifts; 

• React to last-minute changes without disrupting the entire workflow. 

Valia Fashion Manufacturing connects your planning system directly to your cutting equipment, enabling real-time execution and updates, all while harnessing the full power of AI and Industry 4.0 technologies. 

One Valia Fashion customer reduced planning time by 40% and increased machine utilization by 25% after switching from Excel to a connected digital platform. 

Step 5. Monitoring and optimizing performance: turn data into action

Visibility is key for understanding what’s happening on the cutting floor. With out it, improvements are impossible. 

Key metrics to track include: 

• Fabric yield vs. estimated consumption; 

• Machine uptime and throughput; 

• Energy usage and CO₂ emissions; 

• Order lead time and on-time delivery rate. 

Valia Fashion Equipment provides real-time dashboards and analytics to help you monitor these KPIs and identify areas for improvement. 

With better visibility, you can also support your ESG goals and communicate transparently with customers and regulators. 

Brands using Valia Fashion Equipment have reported up to 12% improvement in cutting efficiency and 18% reduction in energy consumption.

Lectra is a member of SPESA.

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