Distributed Assembly Operations: Spreading Work Without Losing Control

When all the work lives in one place

Most brands grow up around a single hub. One building, one core team, one set of assembly tables. It feels efficient, right up until it does not. Launches pile up on top of regular orders. Retail programs and subscription builds compete for the same space. Marketplace prep and packaging relabeling fight for the same people. At that point, the problem is not just volume. It is concentration. Too much assembly work is trying to squeeze through the same small opening.

By the time leaders start talking about distributed assembly operations, they have usually had a rough experience or two. 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." When one site is already struggling, adding more work to the same four walls is not the answer.

What distributed assembly operations really mean

Distributed assembly operations are not just about opening more buildings. They are about designing assembly, kitting, and light manufacturing work so it can run in more than one place, with more than one team, without turning into chaos. That might mean spreading subscription box kitting across regions, running retail compliance assembly in the markets closest to key distribution centers, or handling packaging relabeling where rules change.

On the services side, the toolkit does not change. John Pistone says, "We have created these other value-added services." He makes it concrete: "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." Distributed assembly operations take those services and make them portable instead of tying them to a single warehouse.

Jen Myers connects this to channel growth: "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." Distributed assembly is one way to keep that connection intact as orders shift by region and channel.

Why bad systems kill distributed assembly before it starts

It is tempting to think you can distribute work just by assigning tasks to different places. In reality, the limiting factor is almost always the warehouse management system. If the system cannot track components, work in process, and finished goods accurately in one building, it will not magically perform better in two or three.

Bryan Wright explains the risk clearly: "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100%, as it should." Spread that across multiple sites and you get a simple equation: more places for things to go missing and more time wasted reconciling spreadsheets that never quite match.

He describes the stronger alternative like this: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Extend that across locations, and distributed assembly operations become less scary. You can see what stock is available where, which jobs are running, and how much finished product each site can ship.

Adaptability matters as much as visibility. Bryan points out, "With G10 we can make that change extremely quickly because we have our own development staff." When you adjust a bundle, add a new kit, or roll out a new retailer program, those changes have to propagate across all the places that do the work. Static systems turn distributed operations into a game of telephone.

The founder's fear: more sites, more chances to miss

Founders and operations leaders do not usually fear more capacity. They fear more complexity. One warehouse is hard enough to keep aligned. The idea of multiple sites, each doing assembly work that can affect major customers, sounds like more ways to disappoint important people.

Joel Malmquist hears that anxiety when customers ask about high pressure scenarios. One put it this way: "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?" Now imagine a similar scenario playing out in more than one region at once. Distributed assembly operations only help if they give you more ways to say yes without sliding into panic.

Joel explains how his team responds when the window is real: "We are able to help them get through that big surge and develop and grow their business as it comes in." With distributed operations, that surge can be spread, not stacked. Different locations can take different pieces of the load, so one building is not forced to handle everything at once.

Holly Woods offers a ground level picture of what that effort looks like: "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." Distributed operations do not replace that kind of commitment. They make it possible to direct that energy where it is needed most, instead of expecting one team to cover every emergency.

Designing work so it can move

Distributed assembly operations only work when the work itself is portable. That starts with standardizing how kitting, relabeling, and light manufacturing jobs are defined. If each building invents its own process for the same kit or display, you have not distributed operations; you have multiplied complexity.

Bryan describes the visibility layer that supports standardization: "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 is not just about receipts and shipments. It also shows how specific assembly jobs have run before, giving you templates to reuse in new places.

Once those patterns exist, Maureen notes that customers can actually see them in motion: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." For distributed assembly, that might mean watching a new kit launch in one building first, then repeating the same steps in another location once the process is proven.

Distributed assembly inside omni channel strategies

Most brands do not expand channels and regions one at a time. They do both at once. That is why distributed assembly operations need to understand omni channel flows. One site may tilt toward D2C and marketplace prep. Another may focus on retail compliance assembly and pallet configuration services. A third may handle more subscription or B2B work.

Jen emphasizes that the system glue has to be strong enough to support all of that: "Helping people grow, part of that is the channel expansion and having a warehouse management system, WMS, that supports that seamlessly." She adds, "Everything has to be connected." That way, the same SKU can be assembled differently in different places without becoming a data nightmare.

For marketplaces like Amazon, distributed operations can also mean staging properly labeled inventory closer to key fulfillment centers. That reduces transit time while keeping label and prep standards consistent across sites instead of reinvented at each dock.

When distributed operations prevent local crises

The real test of distributed assembly operations is not a calm week. It is the week when something goes wrong in one place. A weather event, a power outage, a labor issue, or a surprise volume spike can overwhelm a single site. With a distributed model, you at least have the option to shift work instead of simply apologizing to customers.

Holly shared a story about leaning into the grind to hit a critical routing window: "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 a distributed operation, those heroics at one site can be supported by steady work in another, rather than everything falling on the same group of people every time something goes sideways.

Bryan's point about history becomes even more important here: "We have history that shows you all of that tracking." When you have seen how similar projects ran in the past, you are better prepared to decide which location should take on the next one, or how to split work when pressure hits.

Culture that travels across buildings

Distributed assembly operations are not just a technical project. They are a culture project. You want customers to experience the same level of care and responsiveness whether their work is happening in one warehouse or another. That depends on shared expectations, not just shared software.

Mark Becker captures the leadership mindset that helps make that possible: "Yeah, I live in the grind every day." That grind does not stay in headquarters. It sets the tone for managers in every building who have to care about getting the details right.

Bryan sets the standard for the projects that really matter: "You go 110% and make sure that when they're done, this project is something they're going to remember." Distributed operations do not remove that need. They give you more teams who can meet that bar when it is their turn.

When something misses the mark, 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." That attitude is what keeps a network of sites from turning into a network of excuses.

Why distributed assembly operations become a strategic asset

On a simple cost chart, distributed assembly operations can look like extra overhead. More coordination, more sites, more complexity. The upside shows up in resilience and opportunity. You can support more regions without bloated transit times, say yes to more simultaneous launches, and protect yourself against local disruptions that would cripple a single site model.

It all connects back to Connor's straightforward point: "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." Distributed assembly is one of the ways to make that supply chain less fragile and more flexible.

If your leadership conversations are dominated by questions like How will this one warehouse handle the next peak instead of Where should we put the next wave of work, it might be time to think of assembly as something you can distribute. With the right systems and culture, spreading work out does not mean giving up control. It means finally having enough of it.