Quick Tip: Kitting

Kitting - What is it and why is it useful?

Kitting is a method used by manufacturers to help manage their inventory and reduce the time-consuming task of gathering inventory and required components. Kitting is used to prepackage the necessary components for installation before sending them to the field and to prepackage before assembling a product together. 

For example, if you have ever assembled a dresser or bed from IKEA, then you’re aware that it included all the nuts, bolts, and screws you needed and were nicely packaged together so they’d be easy to find. This is a form of kitting and we see this replicated inside many manufacturing facilities in order to streamline product assembly. Grouping separate, but related, components together as a customized kit greatly reduces material handling and processing to decreasing time used for assembly. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• Do you have a vertical product line?

• Are you running into inventory shortages?

• Are you trying to streamline your shop?

 Kitting helps manufacturers reduce material handling time and improve workflow efficiency. Kitting has several advantages such as reducing the time it takes to process parts and reducing downtime in the production assembly line. Since your items are grouped together, you can focus on getting your production completed. Also, there is better inventory control with kitting. Because you are assembling a kit in the beginning, shortages and quality control issues can be resolved prior to creating your kit. This provides less stocked items, reduces space costs and ensures that your critical parts are available. 

Using an ERP system, like MIE Trak Pro, to manage your kitting gives you the advantage of reduced lead times and reduced WIP (Work In Progress); it also maximizes machine utilization because there is less interruption in production caused by shortages or lost parts. MIE Solutions provides an enterprise resource planning software for manufacturers called MIE Trak Pro.