Kitting: Definition

What Is Kitting?

Kitting addresses one of the most consistent sources of waste in maintenance operations: the time technicians spend not doing maintenance. In a typical unplanned maintenance environment, a significant portion of a technician's shift is spent traveling to and from the storeroom, waiting for parts to be issued, searching for the right consumables, or discovering mid-job that a required component is unavailable. Kitting eliminates most of this waste.

The concept is straightforward. Before a planned work order is executed, a storeroom coordinator or planner assembles all required materials, verifies that each item is available and in usable condition, places them in a labeled container or bag, and either delivers the kit to the work site or notifies the technician that it is ready. The technician arrives at the equipment with everything needed to complete the job, and the job starts without delay.

Kitting is closely linked to maintenance planning and scheduling because it only works when the job scope is defined in advance. Emergency and reactive work orders are rarely kitted because the required materials are unknown until the technician diagnoses the equipment. The greatest benefit comes from planned preventive maintenance tasks, shutdowns, and outage work where the scope and parts list are established days or weeks ahead of execution.

How Kitting Works in a Maintenance Operation

A functional kitting process follows a defined sequence that connects planning, procurement, and storeroom operations to job execution.

Step 1: Build the parts list during planning

The maintenance planner identifies all required parts and materials from the work order task description, equipment history, and maintenance procedures. This list becomes the bill of materials (BOM) for the kit. For recurring tasks, BOMs are stored in the CMMS and linked to the work order template, so the parts list is generated automatically each time the task is scheduled.

Step 2: Check availability before the job is scheduled

The planner or storeroom coordinator checks inventory availability for each item on the BOM. If any item is out of stock, the procurement process starts immediately, well before the job's scheduled execution date. This is the critical step: kitting forces parts verification to happen during planning rather than at the job site. A shortage discovered during planning has a week or more to be resolved. A shortage discovered after a machine is shut down must be resolved in hours.

Step 3: Assemble and label the kit

When all materials are confirmed available, storeroom staff pull each item from stock, verify quantities and condition, and place them in a labeled container (bag, bin, or box). The kit label identifies the work order number, asset, job description, and execution date. Some organizations include a printed copy of the work order or procedure inside the kit.

Step 4: Stage the kit

The assembled kit is delivered to a staging area near the work site, or handed off to the technician at the start of the shift. The job begins with all materials present. No mid-job storeroom trips, no waiting on approvals, no discovering missing items after the equipment is already offline.

Kitting vs. Staging vs. Point-of-Use Storage vs. Consignment

Kitting is one of several practices that reduce the time technicians spend retrieving materials. Understanding where each fits prevents misapplication.

In a well-organized maintenance operation, these practices are complementary rather than competing. Point-of-use storage handles routine consumables. Consignment handles high-velocity vendor-replenished items. Kitting handles planned work orders. Staging delivers kits to the field for outage and shutdown work.

Kitting and CMMS

A CMMS makes kitting systematic rather than ad hoc. The key CMMS functions that support kitting are:

• Work order templates with parts lists: BOMs attached to recurring task templates mean the storeroom receives a complete parts list automatically when a work order is generated, without the planner having to rebuild it each time.
• Inventory availability checks: The CMMS shows current stock levels at the time of planning, making it easy to identify shortages before the job is scheduled.
• Parts reservation: Items can be reserved against a specific work order, preventing them from being issued to another job or counted as available when they are already committed.
• Kit tracking: Some CMMS platforms track kit status (assembled, staged, returned), giving planners and supervisors visibility into whether jobs are truly ready to execute.

Good inventory control is a prerequisite for kitting. If stock levels in the CMMS do not reflect actual physical inventory, the parts verification step fails. Kits assembled from inaccurate inventory data produce the same mid-job shortages the process was designed to prevent.

How Kitting Improves Wrench Time: A Worked Example

Wrench time is the percentage of a technician's shift spent on actual maintenance work, as opposed to traveling, waiting, searching, or handling materials. In unorganized maintenance environments, wrench time typically falls between 25% and 35%, meaning technicians spend less than a third of their shift on the tasks they were hired to do.

Consider a team of 10 technicians each working an 8-hour shift. At 25% wrench time, the team produces 20 wrench-hours per day (10 technicians × 8 hours × 0.25). A kitting program that lifts wrench time to 35% produces 28 wrench-hours per day from the same team, an increase of 8 wrench-hours without adding headcount or extending shifts. Across a 5-day work week, that is 40 additional wrench-hours recovered, the equivalent of adding a full technician to the schedule.

The source of that gain is not speed: technicians are not working faster. They are spending less time on non-value-added activity because materials are already assembled and waiting when the job begins.

Benefits of Kitting in Maintenance Operations

• Increased wrench time: Technicians spend more of their shift on actual maintenance work and less time retrieving materials. Parts retrieval is consistently one of the largest single consumers of technician time in unplanned environments.
• Reduced job duration: Jobs that start complete and proceed without material interruptions finish faster. This directly reduces downtime on planned outages and increases asset availability.
• Earlier shortage detection: Moving parts verification to the planning phase catches shortages before they become emergencies. A missing bearing identified three days before the job gives procurement time to source it without premium freight or emergency sourcing.
• Improved parts accountability: Kits provide a clear record of what was issued to which work order. Unused parts returned from a completed kit are documented and re-entered into stock, reducing shrinkage and improving inventory accuracy.
• Reduced storeroom congestion: When technicians do not need to visit the storeroom at job start, storeroom foot traffic drops. Parts are issued in planned batches rather than on demand throughout the day.

When Kitting Is Most and Least Effective

Kitting delivers the greatest benefit for:

• Scheduled preventive maintenance tasks with known parts lists
• Planned shutdowns and turnarounds where job packages are built weeks in advance
• High-frequency recurring tasks (conveyor belt changes, filter replacements, bearing swaps) where BOMs are stable and well documented

Kitting is less applicable to:

• Emergency breakdowns where the fault is unknown until diagnosis
• Highly variable corrective work where the required parts depend on findings at the equipment

Even in organizations with high reactive maintenance volumes, kitting for the planned portion of the workload reduces the overall storeroom burden and gives technicians more time for the reactive work that cannot be planned.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Kitting is a straightforward practice with a direct and measurable impact on maintenance efficiency. When technicians arrive at a job with everything they need, they fix equipment faster, downtime is shorter, and the storeroom operates on a planned rhythm rather than constant on-demand requests.

The discipline behind kitting is maintenance planning. Kits are only as good as the parts lists that define them, and parts lists are only as good as the inventory data and job procedures that inform them. Organizations that invest in planning infrastructure, accurate spare parts data, and CMMS integration consistently get more from kitting than those that treat it as a storeroom activity disconnected from the planning process.