--- title: "Work Orders, Kitting, and Assembly: How Your WMS Can Power Production" date: "2026-03-12" description: "Work orders and assembly pipelines in your WMS eliminate disconnected systems, reduce errors, and let you scale kitting, manufacturing, and bundling operations." author: "CannonWMS Team" tags: "Work Orders, Assembly, Kitting, Manufacturing, BOM, WMS" draft: "false" --- # Work Orders, Kitting, and Assembly: How Your WMS Can Power Production If your warehouse does more than just pick, pack, and ship — if you're building kits, assembling products, running light manufacturing, or bundling items for promotions — you know the pain of managing production in one system and fulfillment in another. Work orders inside your WMS solve this by treating assembly as a first-class warehouse operation, right alongside receiving, putaway, picking, and shipping. ## What Is a Work Order in a WMS? A work order is an instruction to consume component inventory and produce finished goods. It's the warehouse equivalent of a recipe: take these parts, follow these steps, and output this product. In a WMS context, work orders handle: - **Kitting** — combining individual items into a bundle or kit (e.g., a gift set, starter pack, or subscription box) - **Assembly** — building a finished product from component parts (e.g., assembling furniture, electronics, or custom configurations) - **Manufacturing** — light production with quality control checkpoints (e.g., mixing, labeling, packaging, or repackaging) - **Bundling** — creating promotional packs or variety packs from existing inventory The common thread: you're transforming inventory from one form into another, and the WMS needs to track both sides of that equation. ## Why Separate Systems Break Down Most warehouses that do assembly or kitting start with one of these approaches: ### The Spreadsheet Method Someone maintains a spreadsheet of BOMs (bills of materials). When a work order comes in, they manually calculate how many components are needed, check stock levels in the WMS, pull inventory, assemble the product, and then manually add the finished goods back into inventory. **What goes wrong:** - Component inventory isn't reserved, so a sales order can claim the same stock - Finished goods show up in the system after assembly, not during — creating a gap where your available inventory is wrong - No audit trail of what was consumed, when, or by whom ### The Standalone Production Tool You use a dedicated manufacturing or production planning tool alongside your WMS. The production tool tracks BOMs and work orders. The WMS tracks inventory and shipping. **What goes wrong:** - Two systems with two inventory counts that need constant reconciliation - Component inventory gets deducted in the production tool but the WMS doesn't know about it until someone syncs - Finished goods appear in the production tool but aren't available for shipping until someone adds them to the WMS - Your team switches between interfaces, doubling training time and error surface ### The ERP Approach You run everything through an ERP that has both manufacturing and warehouse modules. **What goes wrong:** - ERPs with real manufacturing capabilities cost $50K-200K+ to implement - The warehouse module in most ERPs is rudimentary compared to a purpose-built WMS — no pick tours, no barcode-driven pack stations, no multi-carrier rate shopping - You're paying enterprise prices for warehouse features that don't match what a modern WMS delivers ## How Work Orders Work in CannonWMS CannonWMS treats work orders as a native warehouse operation. Here's the workflow: ### Step 1: Define Your Bill of Materials Set up BOMs for each product you assemble. A BOM lists: - **Component items** — the individual SKUs consumed during assembly - **Quantities per unit** — how many of each component go into one finished product - **Finished good** — the resulting SKU that gets added to inventory For example, a "Premium Starter Kit" BOM might include: | Component | Quantity | |-----------|----------| | Widget A | 2 | | Widget B | 1 | | Carrying Case | 1 | | User Guide | 1 | | **Output: Premium Starter Kit** | **1** | BOMs are reusable. Define them once, then create work orders against them as many times as needed. ### Step 2: Create the Work Order Specify which BOM to use and how many units to produce. The system immediately: - Checks component availability across your warehouse - Reserves component inventory so it can't be claimed by sales orders - Calculates total component consumption (e.g., 50 kits = 100 Widget A, 50 Widget B, 50 cases, 50 guides) - Flags any shortages before your team starts assembly This is where integration with your WMS pays off. Because the work order system shares the same inventory database as your fulfillment system, there's no ambiguity about what's available. ### Step 3: Pick Components The system generates a pick list for the components needed. Your warehouse staff picks them the same way they pick sales orders — with barcode scanning, bin-level accuracy, and verification at each step. Components are moved from their storage locations to the assembly station. Inventory is decremented from the component SKUs in real time. ### Step 4: Assembly with QC Checkpoints As your team assembles, they can move the work order through configurable pipeline stages. A typical assembly pipeline might look like: **Staged → In Progress → QC Check → Complete** Quality control checkpoints let you: - Require inspection at specific stages before the work order can advance - Record pass/fail results per unit - Flag defective units for rework or scrap - Track who performed the inspection and when For operations that need traceability (food, supplements, electronics, medical devices), QC checkpoints create the audit trail your compliance team requires. ### Step 5: Receive Finished Goods When assembly is complete, the finished goods are added to inventory automatically. They're immediately available for: - Sales orders and fulfillment - Channel sync to Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, and other platforms - Inventory reporting and reorder calculations The entire cycle — from component consumption to finished good availability — happens inside one system with one source of truth for inventory. ## Real-World Workflows ### Workflow 1: Subscription Box Assembly **The business:** A DTC brand ships monthly subscription boxes with rotating product selections. **The workflow:** 1. Each month, create a new BOM for that month's box configuration 2. Generate a work order for the number of active subscribers 3. Pick components from warehouse stock 4. Assemble boxes at a dedicated station, scanning each item for verification 5. Completed boxes go directly into the fulfillment queue 6. Pick, pack, and ship as normal sales orders **Why this matters:** Without work orders, subscription box companies typically pre-build boxes using a spreadsheet-based process, manually deducting components and manually adding finished boxes to inventory. Every month. For every variation. It doesn't scale. ### Workflow 2: Light Manufacturing with Serial Tracking **The business:** An electronics company assembles products from imported components, each requiring a unique serial number. **The workflow:** 1. BOM defines component list (PCB, housing, cables, packaging) 2. Work order is created for a production batch of 200 units 3. Components are picked from warehouse bins with barcode scanning 4. At the assembly stage, each finished unit is assigned a serial number 5. QC checkpoint requires a power-on test — pass/fail recorded per serial number 6. Passed units are received into finished goods inventory with serial numbers attached 7. When a unit ships, the serial number is recorded against the sales order **Why this matters:** Serial tracking + assembly in one system means you can trace any finished product back to its production batch, QC results, and component lots. If a customer reports a defect, you can identify every unit from the same batch. ### Workflow 3: Multi-Warehouse Kitting **The business:** A 3PL operator runs kitting operations at their main distribution center while satellite warehouses handle direct-ship single items. **The workflow:** 1. BOMs are defined at the organization level 2. Work orders are created scoped to the main DC 3. Component inventory is consumed from the DC's bins 4. Finished kits are produced and stocked at the DC 5. When a kit order comes in, it ships from the DC 6. When a single-item order comes in, it ships from the nearest satellite warehouse **Why this matters:** The 3PL can run complex kitting at their best-equipped facility while keeping satellite operations simple. Inventory across all locations stays accurate because it's all in one system. ### Workflow 4: Promotional Bundling **The business:** An ecommerce brand runs seasonal promotions with bundled products — buy the "Summer Pack" and get three products for a discounted price. **The workflow:** 1. Create a BOM for "Summer Pack" (Product A + Product B + Product C) 2. Based on demand forecasting, create a work order for 300 bundles 3. Warehouse assembles the bundles, shrink-wraps them, and stores them 4. The "Summer Pack" SKU is synced to Shopify with its own listing and price 5. Orders come in and ship as a single item 6. When the promotion ends, remaining bundles can be disassembled (reverse work order) and components returned to individual inventory **Why this matters:** Without work orders, promotional bundles are either virtual (requiring pickers to grab three separate items per order, slowing fulfillment) or assembled manually with no inventory tracking. Work orders make bundles a real, scannable, shippable SKU. ## The Business Impact Warehouses that bring work orders into their WMS typically see: ### Inventory Accuracy Improves Component consumption is tracked in real time instead of reconciled after the fact. You always know how much raw material you have, how much is reserved for active work orders, and how many finished goods are available. ### Fulfillment Speed Increases Finished goods are ready to ship immediately after assembly. There's no delay waiting for someone to manually add them to the WMS. Kitted products ship as fast as any other single-SKU order. ### Labor Costs Decrease Your team uses one interface for assembly and fulfillment instead of switching between systems. Training is faster. Errors from manual data entry between systems disappear. ### Traceability Gets Built In Every work order creates a record: which components were used, who assembled the product, what QC checks were performed, and when it was completed. For industries that require lot or serial traceability, this isn't optional — it's a compliance requirement. ### You Can Scale Without New Systems Adding a new kit, a new assembly process, or a new production line is just a new BOM and a new work order. You don't need to integrate another tool, train on another system, or reconcile another data source. ## What to Look for in a WMS with Work Order Support If your operation involves any form of assembly, kitting, or bundling, these capabilities matter: - **Bill of Materials management** — define, version, and reuse BOMs - **Work order lifecycle** — create, track, and complete work orders with clear status stages - **Component reservation** — reserve inventory when a work order is created so fulfillment can't claim it - **Barcode-driven picking** — pick components with the same accuracy as sales order picks - **Configurable pipelines** — define assembly stages with optional QC checkpoints - **Serial and lot tracking** — assign and track identifiers through the assembly process - **Multi-warehouse scoping** — run assembly at specific locations - **Real-time inventory updates** — finished goods available instantly, not after a sync ## Bottom Line Work orders aren't just for factories. Any warehouse that combines, bundles, kits, or transforms inventory needs a way to manage that process without spreadsheets and manual inventory adjustments. When work orders live inside your WMS, your inbound, production, and outbound operations all share one inventory truth. Components go in, finished products come out, and everything in between is tracked, verified, and auditable. --- **Need assembly, kitting, or work order management in your warehouse?** [Build your price](/pricing) or [talk to our team](/contact-us) about how CannonWMS handles production workflows.