Automated Assembly Workflows: Letting Systems Orchestrate the Hard Parts

When tribal knowledge is running the warehouse

Every growing brand has at least one person who can make anything ship ready. They know how to kit products for that tricky retailer, how to relabel cartons for a marketplace, how to build a subscription box, and how to fix a pallet that does not match the routing guide. The problem shows up when growth hits and all of that expertise still lives in one or two heads. At that point, you do not have a process. You have a single point of failure. Automated assembly workflows exist to fix exactly that problem.

Most teams only feel the pain when something breaks. As Maureen Milligan explains, "Most of the customers who come to us from another 3PL, their challenges have always been access to their data, order accuracy and efficiency, and basically just meeting the committed requirements." She adds, "Even when they were getting their new inventory delivered to the warehouses, they weren't getting received and on the shelves in a timely fashion to satisfy customer orders." If the basic flow from dock to shelf is shaky, the custom assembly, kitting, and relabeling work behind it is usually running on luck and memory.

What automated assembly workflows actually are

Automated assembly workflows are not robots building products on their own. They are the digital blueprints that tell people and systems what to do, in what order, and with which checks. In a strong setup, the warehouse management system decides when a job opens, which components it needs, where workers should pick them, which stations should do the work, and how the finished output should be received and labeled.

Instead of someone walking around saying, Today we are kitting for this retailer, the system issues tasks. It knows that 2,000 units of a specific kit need to be built. It generates picks for components, moves work to the right zones, and prompts workers to scan each step. Those scans are what keep inventory, counts, and quality aligned as work flows through the building.

This matters because the rules are not optional. Joel Malmquist points out, "Walmart's pretty intense with their labeling rules. Dick's Sporting Goods is the same; if you don't do it right, you get those massive chargeback." Automated workflows turn those routing guide rules into steps on a screen instead of instructions buried in a PDF.

Why manual assembly processes do not scale

It is tempting to think you can tame complexity with training and good intentions. For a while, that works. A handful of experienced people remember which bundle gets which insert, which channel needs which label, and which retailer prefers which pallet pattern. As volume grows, those people become bottlenecks. Everyone waits for answers. Mistakes multiply when they are not available.

Bryan Wright explains what happens when systems cannot keep up: "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100%, as it should." In a manual assembly world, that often looks like missing components, half finished kits, and phantom stock that only exists in spreadsheets.

He describes the better alternative like this: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Automated assembly workflows sit on top of that tracking. They tell the system when inventory should move into work in process, when it should come back out as finished goods, and how each touch should affect available stock.

Without that automation, every new channel, promotion, or pack change adds more stress to the same fragile setup. People improvise more. Mistakes get caught later. Chargebacks quietly eat margin.

The founder's fear: losing flexibility if everything is automated

Founders and operations leaders sometimes worry that automating workflows will make them rigid. They like being able to walk out on the floor, make a decision, and see people adapt in real time. The fear is that if everything is driven by the system, they will lose that flexibility just when they need it most.

Joel Malmquist hears that concern in high pressure conversations. One customer asked, "Say Target drops 10 POs and gives us 48 hours to turn it around? Is G10 the right partner for us to navigate through that and execute at a high level?" Underneath that question is another: Will your systems help during the crunch, or get in the way?

Joel's answer focuses on how structure and urgency work together: "We are able to help them get through that big surge and develop and grow their business as it comes in." Automated assembly workflows are part of that structure. They let you spin up more people on the same process quickly, because the steps are in the system, not in a single supervisor's notebook.

Holly Woods offers a ground level picture of what that looks like during a real crunch: "Our supervisor, warehouse manager, and several employees worked that entire day into the night, came back in in the morning at 5 a.m. to make sure that we had the routing completed for that pickup for Target." In that scenario, automated workflows are not the replacement for hustle. They are the tool that keeps that hustle from turning into chaos.

Turning routing guides and channel rules into system logic

One of the hardest parts of assembly is keeping up with all the places outside the building that can change the rules. Retail routing guides update. Marketplaces adjust prep and label requirements. HAZMAT regulations or packaging standards shift. If those changes live only in binders or chat threads, they never fully land.

Jen Myers highlights the system side of this challenge: "Helping people grow, part of that is the channel expansion and having a warehouse management system, WMS, that supports that seamlessly." She continues, "Everything has to be connected. Now I'm selling into stores as well, and they order a whole pallet at a time as opposed to one unit at a time, as customers would do."

Automated assembly workflows are where that connection becomes real. When a retailer changes a label rule, the workflow changes. When Amazon changes its prep requirements, the workflow changes. The next time a job opens, the system already reflects the new reality. Workers do not have to remember which version of the instructions applies today.

On the value added side, John Pistone describes the broader toolkit that plugs into those workflows: "We have created these other value-added services." He makes it specific: "I can kit for them. I can bundle for them. I can build an Amazon seller central account, and I can do all the content build-up." When physical workflows and digital work move together, launches feel much less fragile.

Automated workflows inside omni channel operations

Modern brands rarely live in a single channel. They sell D2C, into marketplaces, and into retailers at the same time. Each channel wants slightly different versions of the same product. That is where automated assembly workflows show their real value. They let you create different recipes for different channels without inventing new processes every time.

Jen ties this back to system expectations: "Helping people grow, part of that is the channel expansion and having a warehouse management system, WMS, that supports that seamlessly." Automated workflows are how you actually make that support real. One workflow might build a D2C gift bundle. Another might assemble a retail ready case pack. A third might prep inventory for Amazon.

Because the workflows live in the system, you can schedule them based on demand instead of guessing. You know how many units each recipe produced last time, how long it took, and how much labor was involved. That turns planning from guesswork into something closer to math.

Visibility that makes automation feel trustworthy

Automation is only comforting if you can see what it is doing. Brands need more than a promise that workflows exist. They need to see jobs in queue, work in process, and finished goods in a way that maps to their real business questions. How many kits are ready for this promotion. How many relabeled units are available for that retailer. How many subscription boxes will be complete before the ship date.

Bryan describes the visibility layer that makes this possible: "We have portals that show you the data. We have history that shows you all of that tracking. It shows the product landed on the dock at 8 o'clock." That history continues as product moves into assembly jobs, passes each step, and comes back out as saleable inventory.

Maureen explains how customers respond when they can actually see that motion: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." When automated workflows are visible like that, they stop feeling like a black box. They feel like a tool leaders can rely on when planning launches and promotions.

Culture that makes automation work instead of fighting it

Automated assembly workflows do not replace people. They change what people spend their time thinking about. Instead of remembering every detail of a build, teams can focus on following prompts carefully, watching for exceptions, and improving how work flows. That only works if the culture treats the system as a shared source of truth, not as a suggestion.

Mark Becker captures the mindset that makes this shift possible: "Yeah, I live in the grind every day." That grind includes projects where the right answer is not to push harder, but to fix a workflow so the system supports people instead of forcing them to improvise.

Bryan sets the standard for how important projects should feel: "You go 110% and make sure that when they're done, this project is something they're going to remember." Implementing automated workflows for a new kit, retailer, or channel often becomes exactly that kind of project. When it is done well, future work feels easier instead of harder.

When things go wrong, Maureen describes the response: "We say, We made a mistake, this is what happened, this is how we're correcting, it and this is how we're going to make it right by you." Automation does not remove the need for that honesty. It does make it easier to see where a process broke so you can fix both the workflow and the outcome.

Why automated assembly workflows become a compounding advantage

On a simple budget, investing in automated assembly workflows can look like extra cost and extra complexity. You could keep doing things the old way, teach one more person the secret process, or hope that the next season is easier. In practice, automation becomes a compounding advantage. Each new workflow you codify makes the next project faster to design, staff, and run.

It ties directly into Connor Perkins's simple framing: "To be successful and grow rapidly you have to sell a lot of your products. That boils down to having a good product, but also having a good supply chain." Automated assembly workflows strengthen that supply chain at the point where your product is turned into what the market actually buys: kits, bundles, cases, displays, and channel specific packs.

If your leadership meetings are full of questions like Who knows how to build that box and Can we remember what we did last time, it may be time to let systems start orchestrating more of the hard parts. Automated assembly workflows will not replace your best people. They will make sure the way those people work does not become your most fragile asset.