Logistic Providers in St. Louis: What is kitting?

Take from it from the best logistic provider in St. Louis…kitting is essential!

Logistic providers in St. Louis can do much more for your business than just place articles on a truck and send them off. 3PLs frequently offer a broad range of services. One of the most useful ones is kitting, sometimes also referred to as assembly.

Kitting refers to taking finished products and putting them together into a single unit that can be shipped together. Here are a two examples of how kitting can work:

-A company creates a promotion where purchasers of a cell phone also get a car charger and a carrying case included for free. The 3PL creates a pre-assembled bundle of the three items that can be easily picked and shipped together.

-An organization prepares for a “Buy Two, Get One Free” promotion by kitting three items together for easy shipment while still maintaining single products for buyers that want to purchase less.

-A camera company combines an SLR body, two lenses and a carrying base in a kit for sale at a warehouse store at a package price.

Why Not Always Pre-Assemble?

If a business knows that it will always sell items together, it may choose to have them pre-assembled in the same box at the initial production point. For instance, cell phones usually ship with their battery in their initial box. This strategy works well when a company can be sure that it will always ship those items together. However, having logistic providers in St. Louis do kitting allows you to have a more flexible supply chain where you still get the benefit of stocking separate items for separate sales while also kitting your most common combinations for reduced effort and time in the fulfillment process.

Kitting Strategies

Kitting is particularly appropriate for limited-time offers. This way, a company can meet a specific demand for a unique combination of products without disturbing the production process. Many companies turn to kitting around the holidays for this reason.

While kitting might seem like something that most companies would want to do most of the time, it is actually a strategic decision. Kitting saves money in the long run when items are appropriately bundled, but can also cost money if items need to be removed from kits to be sold separately. In addition, kitted items can frequently be less efficient to store, increasing storage costs. As such, deciding what to kit, when to kit it and how much to put together isn’t always a simple decision.

Clark Logistics is one of the leading logistic providers in St. Louis. We have extremely efficient kitting operations that can help to reduce your company’s supply chain costs. In addition, our extensive experience also lets us be a partner that can consult with you to help you define a kitting strategy that maximizes efficiency while reducing costs.

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