What is kitting?

A kit is a set of items handled as one: a first-aid station refill, a camera body bundled with a lens and bag, an install kit with the valve, fittings, and sealant a job needs. Kitting turns a multi-line pick into a single line, which speeds fulfillment and prevents the half-shipped order where the valve arrives without its fittings. There are two operating modes. Pre-built kits are assembled in advance: components are pulled from stock, the kit becomes its own SKU with its own count, and the component counts drop at assembly time. Kit-on-demand (sometimes called a phantom kit) keeps components on the shelf and explodes the kit into its component picks at order time. Pre-building trades flexibility for speed; on-demand keeps components available for other uses but makes every order a multi-pick. The record-keeping question is the one teams skip: when does component inventory decrement? If the system doesn't model the kit's bill of materials, assemblers pull components without any record, component counts drift, and the reorder report misses parts that are being consumed invisibly inside kits. Model the kit contents explicitly, and pick the assembly mode deliberately per kit rather than letting the floor improvise.