When it comes to order fulfillment, businesses are always on the lookout for new ways to slash costs and speed up business transactions. In this case, there’s always the option of kitting to consider.
Kitting Defined
What is kitting exactly? It essentially involves the assembly of individual products into packages that are ready to ship. In the manufacturing industry, the term ‘kitting’ is typically utilized interchangeably with ‘assembly’, which usually encompasses the combining of two or more finished items into a bigger group.
Is Kitting Right For Your Business?
Are you considering kitting your products? If so, it makes more sense to incorporate it if you are typically fulfilling orders with multiple products that combine to make up a complete product. Using kitting no items are overlooked or forgotten.
For instance, if you sell self-help books online, and have a series of four books that have to do with overcoming anxiety, you can offer customers the choice to either buy them individually, or as a group. When bought as a group, you can offer a deal to your customers along the lines of “buy the first three and get the fourth one free”.
This scenario is perfect for kitting because you’ve got four individual products that are grouped together very often. As such, if you automate your order fulfillment, your kits would be assembled that would include all four books. This specific kit would have its own bar code to distinguish it from the individual books, but it would be stocked as one item.
You could also use what we call “flexible kitting” where you sell a basic kit which allows you to exchange one or more items with comparable products while making the order. This method ensures the customer gets exactly what they want and that all their order is fulfilled.
This is just one example. There are literally thousands of items that you could group together in this fashion to make your order fulfillment a cinch.
Advantages of Kitting
Consider some of the advantages of kitting, and how it can save you time and money in your business:
Fewer errors in shipping – When your products are shipped as a kit, it lowers the odds of mistakes happening with your order fulfillment, and allows your fulfillment team to pre-print shipping labels.
Quicker assembly – Rather than assembling each item individually, assembling them as a group slashes time spent on the assembly line. Kitting that’s done in bulk – rather than every time an order comes in – allows products to be kitted faster.
Better packaging – More efficient packaging translates into savings in postage. For instance, instead of packing individual products into a standard box sizes, you can come up with a custom box for popular kits which will help cut back on the size and weight of your packages.
At Oneir Solutions Inc, we can help you sell groups of products as a package and identify alternative product options that are more time-efficient and cost-effective for your business. That is just one more aspect of our fully-integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution.
Get in touch with Oneir Solutions Inc to find out more today!
