Kitting Operations

Don’t let capacity constraints keep you from reaching your operational goals. Acción Performance can quickly adjust our resources to get started on projects quickly, and exceed timeline expectations.

Kitting Operations

Kitting is the act of removing separate products from warehouse shelves and putting them together in pre-assembled packages, boxes, or kits that are ready to ship. In terms of kitting fulfillment services, assembly generally refers to light assembly, which is putting together different pieces of items or packages without the need for professional tools or abilities.

Kitting and assembly procedures in fulfillment services are more difficult than simple pick and pack. To ensure efficiency and accuracy, it encompasses all elements of order kitting and fulfillment services, necessitating the collaboration of many employees and departments.

Most businesses need a kitting company to offer their services since doing it themselves is too expensive, not to mention time consumed and yet mistakes happen, things go missing or parts are misplaced, and the overall disorder that is caused by large volumes of good.

Kitting services save lost time and chaos, allowing you to simplify the companies’ entire process. Your employees will get neatly organized kits, including all of the constituent elements needed for each assembly stage. There’s no need to look for pieces or do any pre-assembly work. Your manufacturing process is significantly easier, neater, and faster.

Kitting Definition

Kitting is the process of collecting separate product parts, assembling them into boxes or kits, and then distributing the kit to the manufacturing operation for their assembling.

This expertise, particularly in the kitting manufacturing environment, stems not only from experience and knowledge but also from investments in the logistics technology world to achieve 100% accuracy in keeping inventory and order pulling.

Kitting Process

The kitting process is achieved in several ways depending on the environment: kitting process flow chart, kitting process in a warehouse, kitting process in manufacturing, and kitting process in sap.

Kitting Process Flow Chart

Step 1: To identify and prioritize regular maintenance work, start with defined task management methods.

You should have clear rules for defining an emergency as well as what may be prepared and scheduled.

Step 2: Acknowledge the importance of condition-based monitoring for overall equipment dependability.

Without a doubt, prevention is always the best option. As a result, you should ensure that you use preventative and predictive maintenance techniques that allow you to maintain the same level of production.

Step 3: When the storeroom receives a request from the maintenance planner to construct a kit, the storeroom kit coordinator and the maintenance planner must communicate clearly.

Communication between the planner and the storage must be maintained daily. After all, this is the only method to make sure you’re always up to date on the status of your kits. Furthermore, a kit-aging key performance measure can be implemented to guarantee that ready-to-schedule kits are not ignored.

Step 4: Canceled kits should be considered as an exception rather than a rule.

Every time a kit is canceled, it should be considered a failure of the system. When work orders are issued, the person in charge must perform a critical review to evaluate whether the work is necessary or whether it can be postponed for a plant shutdown or some equipment downtime that’s planned. Canceling maintenance kits results in less usage of maintenance planners and storeroom personnel, as well as potential equipment breakdown.

Step 5: The effectiveness of a planned work kitting procedure is determined by the supervisors in operations and maintenance.

Communication is crucial in every organization, and this is especially true between these two managerial levels. The fact is that for the kitting process flow chart to operate properly, you must:

• Supervisors of operations must make their equipment available for maintenance to complete the task.
• The maintenance supervisor is responsible for ensuring that the equipment is returned to service in a timely manner.

Kitting Process in Warehouse

Typically, kitting works in the following steps:

1. The kit of components is defined by the production team, typically in collaboration with the manufacturing leaders. These are frequently runner repeater components that would now take a long time to process.
2. Stock will be checked, and if there are any shortages, purchase orders will be placed.
3. A means for distributing the kit should be established.
4. The shop’s team will choose parts and load a trolley with the kit of parts in as per the ERP/MRP requirement and issue for usage.

Kitting Process in Manufacturing

The kitting process in manufacturing offers several advantages, the most important of which is that it reduces the time it takes to process components and reduces assembly line downtime. Kitting can aid in the reduction of handling, operator mobility time, and machine downtime owing to parts availability.

Kitting Process in Sap

Kitting and assembly of warehousing products are fully covered by SAP EWM. Kitting is the process of combining kit component materials, such as raw, semi-finished, and completed items, to create finished products in warehouse management.

The Master data for Kitting Process has the following roles:

• Maintain the Bill of Materials (BOM) Kits
• Define packing details
• Set-up work stations

So, what can Sap EWM support?

1. Kit to Order

The procedure starts with an ERP/CRM sales order. Kits are created in real-time based on client orders. The availability check for the kit components is initiated after the order is received. Some kit components may be utilized in numerous kit assemblies at times. The availability check aids in quickly identifying component stock shortages.

2. Kit to Stock

Kits are pre-built to be supplied as a single SKU in this kitting procedure. When the kit stock level goes below the defined MBQ, the availability check is triggered. Either an ERP production order or, an EWM kit order can be used to start the kit to stock process.

Kitting In Warehouse

Kitting in a warehouse is the practice of merging distinct but related SKUs to produce a new SKU. Essentially, instead of choosing and packaging things separately, warehouse kitting fulfills client orders by pre-assembling individual items into kits that are ready to send out straight away. When a consumer purchases a computer online, they may choose from a variety of software, USB drives, monitors, and other components. After that, the provider would put all of these pieces together into a single kit that would be sent to the client.

Kitting and Assembly

Given that kitting and assembly solutions are key in most businesses, what is the difference between the two?

Kitting is the process of putting together several components into a single product. The goal of generating kits is to have a fully prepared set for when a consumer places an order, allowing the retail fulfillment process to go more quickly and efficiently. Kitting and packaging are usually done in batches.

On the other hand, the process of putting together the different components that make up a kit is known as an assembly. The kit is ready to ship after it is constructed, so there is less effort after the order is placed. To enhance efficiency and streamline the process, kitting and assembly services are performed at stations where fulfillment employees finish the procedure in bulk.

Kitting Equipment

Kitting benefits many organizations that employ the kitting supply chain by providing a simplified, lean inventory and supply system for many sites. By employing the right kitting strategies, here are some benefits that are bound to come your way.

• Major improvements in the manufacturing process eventually reduce the quantity of inventory management and material processing throughout the company’s and OEM customers’ production.
• It reduces the number of space components take up and organizes components in an easily inventoried manner to reduce warehousing and storage space demands.
• It offers more realistic inventory options using a system that arranges components cohesively and improves quality control capabilities.
• Reduced deliveries to customer locations, cutting shipping costs, and freeing up storage space. For all your company storages.
• Lowered handling during shipment and when carrying out inventory, thus reducing the risk of breaking any component.
• Overall, component and complete assembly recording and processing are improved by a big margin.

Kitting is a real lean manufacturing strategy that promotes waste reduction and production efficiency by classifying and packaging components and assemblies into a cohesive unit that can be quickly and simply be documented and put into inventory by most large-scale companies. The large-scale network relies on the benefits and capabilities kitting employs and works with high-quality precision-machined components and effortlessly assembles these parts to simply work the company that employs kitting services and also saves on cost, two major components that require stability for any stable and growing company.