Six assembly lines running.
Nobody knew which ones
were going to finish on time.

Six assembly lines. Hundreds of kit configurations. A production floor running on tribal knowledge.

Meridian Assembly Works is a make-to-order light manufacturer producing custom electrical assemblies, wiring harnesses, and equipment kits for industrial customers. With six concurrent assembly lines and over 50 production and warehouse staff, they build to spec against customer Sales Orders — every kit is unique, every BOM matters, and every late delivery has a customer impact.

They ran on Acumatica. Their assembly tracking system was a whiteboard, a clipboard, and whoever happened to be standing near the production supervisor when a question came up.

Builds stalled. Nobody knew why until it was too late to fix it.

The production floor operated in phases that were invisible to anyone not physically standing on it. Components were pulled from warehouse shelves by hand, staged near the assembly tables, and consumed during build without any system recording what moved where or when. When a build stalled — because a component was missing, miscounted, or pulled for the wrong order — the first person to find out was usually the assembler who ran out of parts mid-build.

With six lines running concurrently, the production supervisor spent significant time on the floor doing visual status checks. There was no way to see build progress from a desk, no early warning on component shortfalls, and no system visibility into which orders were on track and which were quietly falling behind.

When a build completed, the pain moved to Acumatica. Assembly Orders had to be created and released manually — a process that required the supervisor or a designated admin to stop other work, navigate Acumatica, enter the quantities built, and post the record. It happened at end of shift or end of day, not in real time. Acumatica inventory was always behind actual production by hours.

Lot traceability for kit components was best-effort. When a customer or auditor asked which lot of a component went into a specific finished kit, the answer required cross-referencing paper travelers against Acumatica records — a process that took hours and sometimes produced no definitive answer.

Every component scanned into staging. Every finished kit scanned out. Assembly Orders posted automatically at transfer.

WMSi's Kitting module replaced the whiteboard with a scanner-native workflow covering the full assembly lifecycle — component pick, assembly receive, and finished goods transfer — with every event posted to Acumatica in real time.

When a Kit Order is opened, pickers use Zebra scanners to pull components from warehouse locations against the BOM. Each component scan is validated against the kit specification and moves inventory from the pick face to a dedicated staging location — one per Kit Order, automatically created by WMSi. Acumatica receives a Transfer Order for each component batch the moment the scanner session closes. Components are committed and visible in Acumatica before the assembler touches them.

Each of the six assembly stations runs its own Kit Receiving Session. When an assembler finishes a batch of kits, they scan the count into the scanner. WMSi automatically decrements the correct component quantities from staging — using earliest-expiry-first lot selection — and increments finished goods in the receive staging area. Station identity is captured on every session, so per-station productivity is tracked without any additional data entry.

When finished kits are ready to move to warehouse inventory, the Kit Transfer scanner flow guides the worker to the correct destination bin and confirms the move. At that moment — automatically, with no supervisor action — WMSi creates and releases the Acumatica Assembly Order for the transferred quantity. The Assembly Order number is stamped on the receiving session record for full traceability.

The manager portal shows every active Kit Order's status in real time: how many kits have been picked for, how many finished kits are in staging, how many have transferred to warehouse, and which stations are active. No floor walk required.

The supervisor stopped walking the floor to get status. Acumatica stopped being a day behind production.

Build visibility moved from the floor to a screen. The production supervisor could see component staging levels, finished kit counts, and per-station progress across all six lines from the manager portal — updated in real time as scanner events came in. Stalled builds surfaced as staging imbalances before they became missed ship dates.

Manual Assembly Order entry in Acumatica was eliminated. Every Kit Transfer generates and releases the Assembly Order automatically at the moment of transfer — not at end of shift, not when the supervisor has a free minute. Acumatica inventory matches actual production in real time.

Lot traceability became answerable in seconds. Because every component scan records the lot number, source location, and kit order, the chain of custody from supplier lot to finished kit is captured completely by WMSi and reflected in Acumatica's Transfer Order and Assembly Order records.

Meridian Assembly Works is an illustrative composite based on patterns common in make-to-order light manufacturing. Metrics reflect outcomes typical of operations in this profile based on real-world WMS implementation experience. Individual results vary.