Why Do Different Reports Show Different Numbers?

Because one day’s output is counted at four different points by four different people, and each count is honest when it is taken: the line’s own count, the register typed into Excel that night, the store’s record, and a figure quoted from memory. The numbers disagree because there are four of them, not because someone made a mistake.

Which number is right when two reports disagree?

Usually both. You cannot fix this by hunting for the mistake. Most of the time there is none.

Somebody brings a figure for Tuesday. Somebody else brings a different one. The next twenty minutes go on finding out which is correct. The supervisor counted what came off the line before the last bundle was checked. The register was written at six and typed into Excel at nine, and one line was skipped. The store counted what reached finishing, which was less, because a bundle was still on the floor. The figure told to the buyer was rounded, on the phone, from memory.

Nobody argued about accuracy. Four people counted four different things and called all four “Tuesday’s production”.

Where do the numbers come apart?

In four places. Every number that disagrees with another one disagrees at one of them.

• Time. The same event counted at six in the evening and at nine at night gives two answers. Both are right for their moment. A number without a time on it is an opinion.
• Count point. Cut, sewn, checked, finished and packed are five different quantities. Each one is “production”. If the report does not say which, the reader picks his own.
• Copying. Every time a figure is copied by hand, it can change. A number copied three times has had three chances.
• Memory. The most confident number in a meeting is often the one nobody wrote down.

How do you get one number?

You do not need software for this. You need four decisions. They hold on paper as well as in a system.

• Enter it once, where it happened, by the person who saw it. Each extra pair of hands between the line and the report is another chance for the figure to change. “Kal kitna production hua” should have one answer. The man at the line wrote it down. A clerk did not rebuild it at nine at night.
• Never store a number you can add up. If you keep “total shipped” as its own figure and also record each consignment, the two will one day disagree. You will not know which to believe. Record the consignments and add them up each time. The same goes for a balance, a shortfall, or anything called “remaining”.
• Settle the count point before you argue about the count. Decide which quantity the factory reports against. Write it on the report. Order qty is what the buyer ordered. Chart qty is what you plan to produce. Half the arguments in a production meeting are two people using one of each without saying so.
• Let anyone trace a number. A figure you cannot trace to who entered it and when is a claim, not evidence. Once a number can be traced, there is nothing left to argue about.

What does it cost when reports disagree?

More than the irritation. Twenty minutes of a production meeting spent on Tuesday’s total is twenty minutes not spent on the order that is going to be late. Worse, a team that has learned its reports disagree stops acting on any of them. It waits for a number it trusts. That usually means waiting until the problem is visible without a report, and by then it is too late to prevent.

How does StitchLogic keep to one number?

The supervisor enters the day’s output once, on a phone, at the line. The entry names the order and the colour, so the count point is clear. The daily report, the delivery plan and the cost per piece all read that same entry. Shipped pieces are added up from each consignment and never typed in as a second total. Every entry shows who made it and when. If an entry is edited or deleted, the Activity page keeps what it said before.

Two reports that disagree are four count points with one name.

The fix is not in the report. It is upstream, at the moment the number is first written down.

Try this tomorrow. Take the next figure that two people disagree about. Do not decide who is right. Ask each of them four questions. At what time did you count? At which point on the floor? How many times has this number been copied? Against which quantity? You will almost always find both are correct, and the report was unclear. Then see what one entry at the line looks like, or read why cut dates slip.

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