Assembly and Kitting for Coated Components
One less handoff between the coating line and your assembly line
Streamline your production with assembly and kitting from the same company that coats your parts. Great Dane sorts, counts, groups, and light-assembles coated components so they reach you ready to use. Whether the job is a simple two-piece assembly or a kit that has to arrive complete and counted, our team handles it with the finish in mind. Every handoff you remove is one less chance for a coated surface to get damaged before it reaches your line.
Assembly and kitting matter most where several components have to arrive together, in the right quantity, ready to go straight to a line. We prepare your coated parts to your specification and your bill of materials. That saves you a receiving step, a sorting step, and the labor behind both.
Benefits of Our Assembly and Kitting Services
From bagging hardware into kits to assembling several coated parts into a finished unit, this service closes the gap between coating and delivery. Parts leave our plant sorted, counted, and protected. What arrives at your dock is a shipment your line can consume, not a pallet that somebody has to break down and sort first.
What does light assembly include?
Light assembly means combining coated components into a single unit using standard hand tools, or using specialized tools and fixtures that you supply. Typical work includes joining two or more coated parts, fitting hardware, and putting a sub-assembly together so it ships as one item rather than several. It is worth being clear about the boundary.
Great Dane is a coating company that assembles, not a contract manufacturer. If your assembly needs a press, a weld, a torque specification with documentation, or a functional test, tell us up front and we will tell you honestly whether it fits. That answer costs you a phone call. Finding out after the parts have shipped costs a great deal more. Where the work does fit, the advantage is that it happens at the point where the parts already are. Nothing has to be crated, freighted, received, and unpacked between the coating line and the assembly bench.
What does a kit look like?
A kit is whatever grouping lets your line pull one container and have everything it needs. Most of the time that means the coated parts for one assembly, the hardware that goes with them, and a count that matches your bill of materials. Hardware can be bagged. Components can be separated so surfaces do not rub against each other in transit. Kits can be labeled so your receiving team can identify them without opening anything. The arrangement follows how you consume the parts.
A line that builds one unit at a time wants one kit per unit. A line running batches wants a container of each component in matching quantities. Both are straightforward once we know which one you are. Kitting works best specified alongside labeling and packing, because the three decisions affect each other. All three are covered on our Custom Services page.
Can you handle hardware and components we supply?
This comes up on most kitting conversations. A kit often includes items that never go through a coating line, such as fasteners, gaskets, bearings, decals, or instruction sheets. If your kit needs those, tell us early. We will confirm what we can receive, store, and include, along with how far in advance the material needs to arrive and how it should be counted in. What we will not do is guess.
Uncounted customer material sitting in a coating plant is how kits go out short, and a short kit stops a line just as effectively as a missing coated part. So the arrangement gets documented on your ID Sheet, the project record our Quality and Sales teams build with you before the job runs, alongside the coating specification, the masking points, and the labeling. One record, one set of expectations, every department working from it.
Why assemble and kit at the coater?
Because of what happens in between otherwise. A coated part that leaves us, gets received somewhere else, gets unpacked, handled, assembled, and repacked has been through several sets of hands that did not coat it. Each one is a chance to scratch a finish, and each one is a party deciding on their own whether a mark matters enough to send back. When the assembly happens here, that stretch disappears. The parts never leave the plant. Our people handle coated surfaces every day and know which ones mark easily.
And if something does get damaged at the bench, the coating line is right here. A part can be recoated instead of crated, shipped back, and slotted into a schedule two weeks out.
A part can be stripped and recoated instead of crated, shipped back, and slotted into a schedule two weeks out. One company is accountable for the coating and for the condition it arrives in, which removes the conversation where two suppliers each explain that it was not them.
Does this work for e-coated parts?
Yes. Assembly and kitting happen after coating, so they apply to work from either plant. We run powder coating and electrocoating in two dedicated facilities, and parts from both lines can be sorted, kitted, and light-assembled before they ship. The same is true of dual-layer work, where a powder topcoat goes over an e-coat primer. There is a practical benefit here that is easy to miss. Some assemblies mix parts that need different coatings. A frame might be powder coated for appearance and hardness while a bracket in the same kit is e-coated for corrosion protection in a recessed area. Most manufacturers handle that by using two coaters and doing the sorting themselves. We run both processes, so those parts can be coated in the same building, kitted together, and shipped as one unit with one purchase order behind it.
Send us your bill of materials and how your line consumes the parts. We will tell you what we can assemble, what we can kit, and what it costs. Call 724-537-9709 or request a quote.
You can learn more about the value-added services we offer on our Custom Services page.