{"id":7108,"date":"2026-06-30T18:05:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/us.rs-online.com\/expert\/?p=7108"},"modified":"2026-06-30T18:05:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:05:30","slug":"problem-solved-optimizing-production-workflows-with-alex-davies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/us.rs-online.com\/expert\/problem-solved-optimizing-production-workflows-with-alex-davies\/","title":{"rendered":"Problem? Solved! \u2013 Optimizing production workflows with Alex Davies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this edition of the new Problem? Solved! RS Expert Advice series,Alex Davies, the Senior Director of Solutions Product and Delivery at RS, explains how kitting, bagging, labeling, and custom assembly services help industrial organizations overcome labor shortages and streamline the source-to-build process.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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RS serves industrial customers who build and maintain assets and infrastructure throughout the discrete and process manufacturing, facilities and intralogistics, and energy and utilities industries \u2014 providing an extensive array of proven product solutions from trusted suppliers as well as a selection of value-added solutions and services designed to solve customers\u2019 pain points. The new \u201cProblem? Solved!\u201d<\/a> RS Expert Advice series features RS experts<\/a> addressing common customer challenges they can help you overcome. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Alex Davies, Senior Director of Solutions Product and Delivery at RS<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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For this edition, we spoke to Alex Davies, the Senior Director of Solutions Product and Delivery at RS, about the RS suite of Value-Added Solutions, including kitting, bagging, labeling, and custom assembly services designed to help customers reduce sorting and staging labor and improve picking, maintenance, and assembly workflows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi Alex. Thanks for <\/strong>joining us again<\/strong><\/a> to dive deeper into the RS suite of Value-Added Solutions \u2014 specifically kitting, bagging, and labeling and custom assembly services. What pain points are these services resolving? And what does utilizing these services look like?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

OEMs, machine builders, panel shops, and contract manufacturers make up a large part of our customer base here in North America, and almost all of these businesses have at least some type of manual assembly process that uses humans to build things out of the components we supply. The things they build can comprise any number of parts \u2014 spanning single digits to thousands \u2014 so their parts lists or bills of materials (BOMs) vary in size, but most tend to include anywhere from a few to a wide variety of suppliers and brands, as well as various specs (e.g., sizes, shapes, colors, capabilities, etc.). So, BOMs can be difficult to manage \u2014 especially since parts from different suppliers could have very different lead times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The procurement professionals at these OEMs, machine builders, panel shops, and contract manufacturers are responsible for ordering lots of differing things from lots of different suppliers, receiving the items, reconciling all the different orders, and putting them where they go, which can require an excessive amount of time and effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One challenge that a lot of our production customers are facing is space constraints. A lot of small and medium-sized industrial companies operate out of small and medium-sized buildings and prefer to use their space to house and expand on their assembly capabilities, which is smart but makes holding onto inventory a challenge because it takes up precious space. The inventory these operations tend to stock is typically held in modest storage areas \u2014 often cages \u2014 that experience a lot of dynamic action: people putting things away wherever they can find the space and then, at some point in the not-too-distant future, finding and picking them, prepping them for use, and delivering them to the assembly teams in the production environment. There\u2019s a lot of duplication of effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you receive 50 parts from 12 suppliers. They’re all different product categories, shapes, and sizes, and you’ve got to find space for each of them in your facility. This requires a lot of walking around and manual labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


And then there\u2019s the physical production process. To reuse the LEGO\u00ae<\/sup> versus off-brand building bricks analogy from my first Problem? Solved! interview<\/a>, the more individual pieces you have that aren\u2019t clearly organized, grouped, and labeled, the harder and the more protracted production becomes. When BOMs \u2014 and especially long, complex BOMs \u2014 are delivered un-kitted, bagged, and labeled, like off-brand bricks instead of LEGO, it wastes labor time and delays production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the good things about working with these types of companies is that most \u2014 or at least most mid-size ones \u2014 have some type of continuous improvement or Kaizen-type mentality in their business. So, they’re really, really receptive to opportunities for improvement and how they can maximize the impact of their assembly teams. Skilled labor continues to be incredibly hard to find and retain in every sector of the industrial market, and that makes these losses disproportionately costly \u2014 and solving them super impactful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s competitive industrial market, organizations strive to be faster to market and leaner than ever. The current geopolitical environment and economic concerns about cost are also adding pressure for small and medium industrial customers to do more with less \u2014 but without compromising their commercial position in the market. One of the many ways we help them do this is by simplifying the source-to-build process in much the same way LEGO does \u2014 through bagging, kitting, labeling, and even custom assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a custom order solutions perspective, we do a number of different things that fall into one of the following three categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n