Kitting is befitting to fulfillment process

Those experienced in inventory control and know their way around the warehouse, will tell you that maintaining an efficient supply chain is not an easy task. There are many components involved in the process and the chance of losing customers to a better organized competitor creates high anxiety.

Experienced workers in the field have reported kitting parts is a crucial element in making the process run smoothly. Kitting involves organizing necessary components of a job into separate bins for easy access and tracking.

The problem and solution

Businesses often make the mistake of leaving a great deal of management to be executed on the shop floors, though the responsibility needs to be shared by front offices. Tracking inventory becomes a difficult task once parts hit the production floor using the traditional bag-and-bin process. Under this method, parts can be damaged or lost without accurate means of tracking. The act of kitting provides only parts that are needed, in the amounts needed, and where and when needed.

In and bag-and-bin system, a worker may need to take time away from production to identify certain components that are missing and remedy the situation. Kitting affords the employee to have all components ahead of time, so production is never stymied.

The benefits

Only parts that are needed to fulfill a certain job are purchased which enables the front office to have more knowledge of inventory costs. An optimal scenario is to have the supplier ship the components needed to fulfill an order already kitted, but if not, the process should be performed before products are constructed on the floor. Kitting not only makes sense as far as employee complications and front office management is concerned, but it is conducive to providing the best service possible. Assembly and warehousing businesses are heavily invested in how quickly they can assemble and ship products in order to receive more orders.


New designs can be implemented more quickly using the kitting system. If an older product has been improved, but still involves similar parts and processes, the manufacturer need only to lightly modify the kitting system already in place. This way, they are maximizing the kitting work already done and minimizing the work ahead.