Know every customer’s grey cloth from gate-in to finished roll and shade card.

A processing house does not own the cloth. Mills, traders and garment makers send grey fabric by the lot, and the house returns it dyed, printed or finished to an agreed shade, width and hand. What it sells is the process. Nothing else.

That makes the record of each lot the whole business. The customer wants to know what came in, which route it followed, what was lost and when it will be back. The house must answer without walking the shop, opening the register of each machine and asking the dye master what he remembers about that lot from last Tuesday.

Grey is received at the gate and measured. The marketing team books it against the customer’s order with the process route: singeing, desizing, bleaching, dyeing or printing, then stenter and compacting. A lab dip goes out. Approval comes back by message.

The dye house turns the approved dip into a recipe and runs the lot in a jet, jigger or winch, or on a continuous range. Printing needs screens or a rotary set-up. After that, the stenter sets width and shrinkage and the finishing section applies softener or coating.

Inspection marks defects on each roll. The lot is folded and tagged, then goes back to the customer with a process statement of metres in, metres out and shrinkage. Re-dyes happen. Each one has to be charged or absorbed, and that depends on the cause, which is rarely written anywhere the accounts clerk can read it when the bill is made.