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Sewing & Apparel

Sewing Production Planner

Machine capacity, order schedule, weekly load and line balance for small sewing factories

Sewing Production Planner: Know before you promise a date
Know before you promise a date
  • Sewing Production Planner: Know before you promise a date
  • Late orders and the bottleneck: Orders to watch, machine load and what needs attention
  • Your orders on a calendar: Start, finish, due date — late days in red, holidays skipped
  • See which machines hold you back: Busy share per day by machine group
  • The next 12 weeks: Busy share by week + a due-date check that warns before you're late
  • Balance a line in minutes: Takt time, operators per group, slowest operator, output per day
  • One row per batch: Style, tier, quantity, pieces done, fabric ready, due date, priority
  • What each machine group can do: Machines, operators and hours → minutes per day and work booked

from $16.99 on Etsy

Price on Etsy may vary (sales, your currency).

View on Etsy
  • Google Sheets + Excel versions included
  • Instant digital download, nothing is shipped
  • Sample data and a Start Here tab
  • One-time purchase, no subscription

Works in Google Sheets (free Google account) and Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer.

Will this batch ship on time, and which machines are holding the line back? This planner turns your styles' operation times and your open orders into a schedule with start and finish dates, a late or at-risk flag on every order, the busiest machine group week by week, and a line balance for any style.

Made for small cut-and-sew and CMT factories (5 to 40 operators) sewing batches of tees, long sleeves, hoodies, zip hoodies, sweatshirts and joggers for wholesale clients and clothing brands.

What's inside

  • Start Here

    Quick guide, your factory and settings (status date, work days, hours per day, efficiency, at-risk buffer, default finishing tier), your clients and your days off and extra work days

  • Dashboard

    Orders late, overdue and at risk, the bottleneck machine group, work booked, on-time share, load by machine group for the next 4 weeks and "What needs attention"

  • Schedule Board

    A printable day-by-day plan for the next 31 days with bars for the first 20 orders in plan order, due-date markers, late days in red and a strip that shows how busy each machine group (up to 8) is each day

  • Orders

    Up to 100 batches with style, finishing tier, quantity, pieces already sewn, fabric-ready date, due date, priority and hold, plus start, finish, slack and status

  • Load

    Minutes each order needs on every machine group, the slowest group for that order and the planned start and finish

  • Weekly

    12 weeks of machine-group load, plus a due-date check that shows when work due by a week needs more time than a group has

  • Line Balance

    Pick a style and a daily target; get takt time, operators per machine group, an operator number for every operation, seconds per operator against takt and balance efficiency

  • Capacity

    Your machine groups with machines, operators, hours and stage (sewing, or after sewing such as pressing and packing), the minutes each group has per day and the work booked on it

  • Styles, Operations and Style Times

    Your styles and their operation breakdown (section, operation, machine group, seam width, seconds, Economy / Standard / Premium), summed into seconds per garment for each machine group

Why you'll like it

  • Know before you promise a date: every order gets a finish date from real machine time, not a guess
  • See the bottleneck: the machine group that sets your pace is named on the Dashboard and the board
  • Plan around holidays, short weeks and an overtime Saturday: dates follow your own work calendar
  • Simple to keep current: update pieces sewn and the plan moves on from today
  • Balance a new line in minutes: takt, operators per group and the slowest operator for any style
  • Built with a working cut-and-sew workshop and a data analyst; every number is a formula you can trace
  • Sample factory with 6 styles, 121 operations and 12 orders for 4 clients, so on-track, at-risk, late, overdue, on-hold and done orders all show
  • No subscription and no app; your data stays in your own file

How you get it

  1. Download on Etsy

    Buy the template on Etsy, then download START-HERE.pdf and the Excel .zip from your Purchases.

    How to download

  2. Make a copy

    Click MAKE A COPY in the PDF: your own Google Sheet is saved to your Google Drive. Prefer Excel? Open the .xlsx.

    How to make your copy

  3. Start

    Follow the Start Here tab. Type in the cream cells; the gray cells do the math for you.

    Clearing the sample data

You receive:

  • START-HERE.pdf — Google Sheets link + quick guide
  • sewing-production-planner-excel.zip — Excel version

Good to know

  • Times are in seconds per operation; the plan is in work days and dates. Room for 10 machine groups, 40 styles, 600 operations, 100 orders and 30 days off.
  • It is a capacity plan: each machine group works through the orders in plan order at its own pace. It does not track bundles or operators minute by minute.
  • Sample operation times and the sample factory are made up. Replace them with your own times.
  • Sizes and Short / Tall fits are not planned separately: use one time per style and finishing tier.
  • Orders still waiting for fabric are planned from their fabric-ready date; orders with fabric on hand go ahead of them. Pressing and packing finish each order after its sewing.
  • The Schedule Board shows up to 20 orders and 8 machine groups; every order is on Orders and Load.
  • It is a spreadsheet, not an app: it does not send reminders or connect to machines.
  • Best used on a computer; you can view it in the Google Sheets app on your phone. Using a Mac?
  • For use in one business. Please do not resell or share the files.
  • Listing images show real screenshots of this template with sample data.

Designed by me with the help of AI tools.

View Sewing Production Planner on Etsy

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