Manufacturers who assemble multi-component products in-house or ship them to customers for assembly can waste time, money, and effort constantly gathering and organizing the various fasteners needed to successfully complete product assembly. Kitting is the secret to eliminating this wasteful practice.
What is kitting? It’s the process of pre-packaging fasteners such as screws, nuts, bolts, washers and custom parts in clear plastic bags or boxes that are labeled according to customer specifications. This strategy has proven highly useful for a variety of products, applications, and industries. Having specific types and sizes of all related fastener items bagged or boxed to be included with the components requiring assembly will speed up production and reduce waste, cost, and inefficiency. The result is a more optimized business model for enhanced logistics.
Here’s how it works:
Typically, when fulfilling an order for individual products, the item is located through the unique identifying code in the warehouse management system. Then, an employee retrieves the item before updating the inventory and completing the order fulfillment. This process is repeated for every product that’s ordered, as individual SKUs assigned to individual items are all picked, packed, and shipped separately.
Kitting pre-assembles all those individual items into ready-to-ship kits instead of picking and packing them as orders are received. When one item is ordered or sold, the inventory management system registers the rest of the items as part of the order or sale. As a result, kitting can reduce fulfillment costs while helping increase revenue, customer satisfaction, and the bottom line.
Kitting provides a number of advantages, including:
- Simplified Ordering and Invoice Tracking Only one kit part number is needed instead of multiple numbers to accomplish the same goal, requiring only one invoice for tracking
- More efficient production Significant time and effort is saved by having all needed parts in one location
- Cost-effective JIT delivery EFI develops, monitors, and manages kits to YOUR specifications and needs
- Reduced waste Less packaging and better parts organization reduces mistakes and waste
At Electronic Fasteners, we provide complete kitting services. Whether you need five parts or fifty parts bagged or boxed, we can do it quickly and cost-efficiently, saving you the time and expense of ordering, receiving, handling and tracking the same multiple parts over and over again. To learn more about the advantages of kitting, contact our kitting experts today.