Benefits of Kitting | What is it?
In the world of manufacturing and product distribution, the high demand for parts and components of certain objects is in high demand. With a high turn around and short life cycles of products, consumers, businesses and OEMs are in need of spare, replacements and new parts. With the high demand also comes high storage needs, in order to keep up with this growth, the process of kitting has been developed in the manufacturing sector.
What is Kitting?
To put it simply, kitting is a method of bringing individual, but related products, parts to items and packaging them together to make them into one ‘kit’.
It is a process of simplifying the complex process and components of part management which eliminates time searching for items to bundle up to be sent off from OEMs. Kitting is usually performed by warehouses who manage and distribute parts as well as prepare them.
How does Kitting work?
Kitting is a process of grouping inventory, packaging it up and selling it as a whole rather than individually. It is a method which offers a higher rate of saving and allows all OEMs to clear stock and for customers to get a kit of products as a whole rather than individually.
When it comes to kitting it could range from anything including products to spare parts. Products are sold as more of a whole e.g. a computer kit supplying the monitor, hard-drive, keyboard and mouse together as a bundle to spare parts for items that may need to be used together to maintain a functioning product.
The products are then ready to be shipped to get the customer in need as soon as the order comes in.
Without kitting it is very hard to be efficient within the OEM space, so we have a few benefits to show you why kitting will help organize and customize inventory.
Benefits of Kitting
The benefits from kitting early outweigh not using the process and these include:
- Improves the turnover of inventory by making it easily accessible
- Assists in the organization and assembly of parts, it is smart and produces an effective workflow
- Helps with time management, kitting reduces time handling and the workload it takes to organize and send parts from a case by case process
- Makes more space within the warehouse, bundling inventory to send off straight away makes room for more stock
- Improve the supply chain from an OEM to the customer so the process to smooth and timely, having kits made up allows for a fast turn around
- Helps with stock management, when the inventory is kitted it allows the OEM to know what of kind parts they have and what needs to be made or ordered
It makes complete sense to use kitting as part of any OEM to provide kits to create the ultimate chain supply, to have storage space and reduce costs as well as create flexibility. However, not as many OEMs are using kitting as part of their operations as there should be, it is a very important merchandising tool that is heavily overlooked.
