The mill chargeback you are leaving inside tolerance.
Fleece that ships 3.07% heavy is still in spec at ±5%. The factory pays for the difference every month.
Overweight fabric is a cost nobody books. The mill ships cloth heavier than specified, the garment uses more of it, and because the contract allows a margin either side, nothing is claimable.
The numbers from one program
In our sample factory, 934 weight samples across a year showed the fleece running 3.07% over standard on average. The dark colors ran heaviest. Black, the largest-volume color, ran 5.5% over, with only half its lots inside tolerance.
At ±5%, the mill can run heavy for free. Tighten the contract to ±2%, which is closer to best practice for knit fleece, and the same average breaches it. The claim becomes large enough that the mill has a reason to fix its dyeing.
The factory was already doing half of this
The team had issued $52,174 in debit notes to the mill over two months for short lots, irregulars, rescue labor and failed lab tests. The model read every note, checked each reconciled to the cent, and showed May’s notes alone were worth $0.40 per unit, enough to move that month from a small loss to a margin if honoured.
The chargeback process worked. The contract was the leak. Nobody could see it because the weight study, the purchase orders and the cost sheet lived in different files.