WMS Driven Assembly Tasks: Letting the System Run the Line

When projects live in spreadsheets and sticky notes

In a lot of warehouses, the hardest work does not live inside the system. It lives on clipboards, in spreadsheets, and in the heads of a few very busy supervisors. Kitting projects, relabeling work, and special retail builds are tracked in side lists instead of in the warehouse management system. That works for a while. Then volumes rise, channels multiply, and those side lists start to crack. WMS driven assembly tasks are the antidote. They move project work into the same system that runs the rest of your operation.

By the time brands go looking for that kind of structure, they usually have scars. 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 project work lives off to the side, it makes those basic problems worse, not better.

What WMS driven assembly tasks actually are

WMS driven assembly tasks take things you used to manage ad hoc and turn them into structured jobs in the system. Instead of saying, We need 5,000 kits for that retailer, and hoping the floor figures it out, you create an assembly order. The WMS decides what needs to be picked, pushes work to the right zones, prompts scans at each step, and receives finished goods back into inventory when the job is done.

That same pattern works for relabeling projects, subscription builds, display assembly, and post production light manufacturing. The WMS becomes the conductor. It does not replace people, but it does decide who should be doing what, where, and in what order, based on rules you can see and change.

Those rules are not suggestions. Retailers and marketplaces treat them as non negotiable. Joel Malmquist says, "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." WMS driven tasks turn those rules into steps on a screen instead of a note taped to a pack station.

Why manual project management does not keep up

When volumes are low, you can get away with whiteboard planning. A supervisor walks the floor, explains the plan, and checks in during the day. As orders rise and project work increases, that model starts to sag. People forget details. New hires miss steps. Inventory counts drift away from reality because nobody is scanning when work in process moves.

Bryan Wright lays out the risk when systems are weak: "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100%, as it should." If the WMS is not driving assembly tasks, it usually is not tracking them well either. You end up with open questions every night. How many kits are done. How many cartons are corrected. How much product is in limbo on tables, half finished and hard to count.

He explains the alternative like this: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." WMS driven assembly tasks sit on top of that tracking. Every pick, every scan at a station, and every receipt back into finished goods is recorded, so your inventory picture stays clear even when project work is heavy.

The founder's fear: losing flexibility if the system is in charge

Founders and operations leaders sometimes worry that once the WMS is telling everyone what to do, they will lose the ability to adapt on the fly. They are used to grabbing a supervisor, pointing at a pile of product, and saying, We need this out today. The fear is that WMS driven assembly tasks will slow that instinct down instead of amplifying it.

Joel hears a similar concern when customers ask about high pressure situations. One asked him, "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 one. Will your system help us in the crunch, or get in the way.

His answer focuses on what happens when urgency meets structure: "We are able to help them get through that big surge and develop and grow their business as it comes in." WMS driven assembly tasks make that possible. They let you spin up more people on the same job quickly, because the steps are in the system, not just in one lead's memory.

Holly Woods describes what that looks like under real time pressure: "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." When the WMS is running assembly tasks, that kind of all hands push follows a clear path instead of inventing a new process in the middle of the night.

Letting the WMS decide what happens next

WMS driven assembly tasks shine when there is more work to do than people to do it. Instead of managers juggling priorities in their heads, the system sequences jobs based on rules. It can push urgent tasks to the top, group similar work to reduce walking, and direct specific tasks to specific zones or teams.

Jen Myers talks about the role of the system as brands grow: "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." WMS driven tasks are where that connection stops being a slogan and starts being a lived experience on the floor.

On the value added front, John Pistone describes the toolkit that plugs into those flows: "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 the WMS is driving assembly, those services become repeatable recipes instead of one off heroics.

WMS driven tasks inside omni channel operations

Modern brands do not get the luxury of one channel at a time. They are shipping D2C, into marketplaces, and into retailers all at once. Each channel brings its own prep, kitting, and labeling work. Without WMS driven assembly tasks, those jobs pile up as competing requests. With them, the system can orchestrate a mix of tasks that respect both deadlines and constraints.

Jen points out that channel expansion is where weak systems tend to break: "Helping people grow, part of that is the channel expansion and having a warehouse management system, WMS, that supports that seamlessly." WMS driven tasks help keep that expansion from turning into chaos. One workflow handles retail compliance assembly. Another handles marketplace prep. A third runs subscription box kitting. The WMS decides which jobs run when, and how much labor to point at each.

That orchestration matters when everything hits at once. Instead of every department shouting, My job is the priority, you get a queue that reflects the real business rules you agreed on.

Visibility that makes project work less mysterious

One of the biggest frustrations for leaders is not knowing what is really happening with project work. They hear that a kitting job started yesterday. They hope a relabeling project will finish by Friday. They guess at how many subscription boxes will be done before the ship date. WMS driven assembly tasks change that story.

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 does not stop at receiving. It continues as product moves into assembly jobs, passes station scans, and comes back as finished inventory.

Maureen explains how customers react when they can see this on screen: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." Instead of asking, Is that project done yet, leaders can look at a dashboard and see exactly how many units are complete, how many are in process, and whether the current pace will hit the promised date.

Culture that embraces the system instead of bypassing it

Even the best WMS cannot help if people treat it as optional. WMS driven assembly tasks only work when teams are willing to scan, follow prompts, and trust that the system is there to help, not to slow them down. That shift is as much about culture as it is about code.

Mark Becker captures the leadership mindset that supports that shift: "Yeah, I live in the grind every day." That grind includes long projects to map messy, real world work into clean, system driven flows. It is not glamorous, but it is what keeps operations from living in a permanent state of exception handling.

Bryan sets the bar for how seriously to take these projects: "You go 110% and make sure that when they're done, this project is something they're going to remember." Implementing WMS driven assembly tasks for a new channel or kit often becomes that kind of memorable project. Once it is in place, the daily grind gets easier, not harder.

When something still goes 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." WMS driven tasks make those corrections faster, because you can see exactly where a process failed and how to adjust it.

Why WMS driven assembly tasks become a quiet superpower

On a budget line, WMS driven assembly tasks can look like configuration work and training hours. On the floor, they feel like breathing room. Projects stop living in panic mode. Inventory stops vanishing into half finished piles. Leaders stop guessing about what is done and start planning based on what they can see.

It ties directly back to Connor Perkins's simple observation: "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." WMS driven assembly tasks strengthen that supply chain at the point where complexity usually collects, then spills over onto customers.

If your team spends more time juggling side lists and emergency projects than following clear, repeatable steps, it might be time to let the WMS run more of the line. Done well, WMS driven assembly tasks do not take control away from your people. They give them the structure they need to do their best work at scale.