In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, one thing is clear: at-home healthcare is becoming the new norm. The growth of telemedicine and remote healthcare services has been nothing short of astounding, with experts even claiming that telemedicine has advanced by a decade in just the past year.
Medical Kitting is Critical to the Healthcare Industry
Amid this transformation, one industry that continues to thrive is medical kitting services, specifically tailored for at-home use. Medical kitting services is a critical function of telemedicine and healthcare packaging processes, providing a variety of kitting functions to streamline healthcare services and improve the health and wellbeing of patients from all over the world. Healthcare providers rely on outsourcing medical kitting services that are beneficial for both providers and patients.
What Is Medical Kitting?
Medical kitting is the process of assembling multiple medical devices into a single package to create a medical kit. These kits can include a wide range of items, from saliva swabs to biohazard bags, and they are designed for use in various healthcare settings, including hospitals, surgery centers, physician’s offices, healthcare agencies, and, most importantly, at home. Examples of medical kits span from first-aid kits to home healthcare products, antibody test kits, food sensitivity test kits, spot collection kits, and even ancestry tracing swab kits. The key to successful medical kit assembly lies in understanding the specific needs of the product.
Different Types of Assembly
Medical kitting or assembly can be executed in several ways, each with its own set of advantages and considerations:
- Manual Assembly: This method relies on human operators who use their natural skills and dexterity to assemble the kits. While it can be time and labor-intensive, it offers flexibility and adaptability.
- Semi-Automated Assembly: In this approach, both humans and robots collaborate in the assembly process. It requires careful planning to optimize the sequence of operations between humans and machines.
- Automated Assembly: Here, mechanized devices handle various processes in creating a product. Automated systems excel in repetitive tasks and are well-suited for high-volume production.
Why Outsource Medical Kitting
With the growing demand for medical kitting services, outsourcing has emerged as a viable solution for businesses, especially in the diagnostic and precision medicine sectors. Here are some compelling reasons to consider outsourcing your medical kitting needs:
- Cost Advantages: Outsourcing can lead to significant cost savings, enabling you to complete kit assembly tasks more efficiently and with higher quality.
- Increased Efficiency & Expertise: Outsourcing partners bring years of experience and expertise, ensuring the successful completion of complex projects.
- Focus on Core Areas: By outsourcing non-core tasks like medical kitting, you can concentrate on other critical aspects of your business.
- Access to Skilled Resources: Outsourced partners have access to well-educated employees with prior experience in handling specific industry demands.
- Regulatory Expertise: Outsourcing partners often have regulatory advisors who specialize in your market, guiding you through the certification process and ensuring compliance.
Considerations for Medical Kitting Providers
When searching for medical kitting providers, be sure to consider the following:
- Experience – ask how long the company has been providing kitting services, and examples of products kitted for other customers.
- Resources and capacity – make sure the kitting provider has ample space to allocate just for your projects to make sure your items stay safe and protected from other customers’ products. Ask about machinery and equipment used to facilitate streamlined kitting processes.
- Workflow processes – are customer items carefully handled to ensure a secure flow of goods? What is the flow of material from receipt through kitting, assembly, packaging, and shipping?
- Quality certifications – does the kitting provider hold quality certifications like ISO9001 or other awards for their services?
- Inventory management – how are your individual items accounted for from receipt through shipping? Do they provide lot code traceability? Do they provide shrink wrapping, palletizing, and assistance with shipping and logistics?
- What is their record of on-time delivery? – make sure your medical kitting provider can deliver your goods on time.
- Do they have any clean room facilities? – is the work space clean and organized? Certified to any standards such as FDA?
Why Choose Peoria Production Solutions
Peoria Production Solutions (PPS) is a prominent contract packaging company specializing in kitting and assembly services. Recognized as one of the Top Five Best Healthcare Packaging Companies in 2023, PPS offers a wide range of services, including kitting, assembly, and packaging of single-use disposable medical products, devices, and instruments. PPS also provides manufacturing and assembly of face shields and sneeze guards, among other medical products.
- Decades of experience – PPS offers more than 80 years of experience in providing stellar kitting and assembling services and operating as a fully self-sustaining not-for-profit company.
- Vast resources and capacity – PPS utilizes modern, automated equipment in our state-of-the-art facility with 17 shipping and receiving bays. This allows for ample space to dedicate workstations for customer processes and to keep materials clean and organized.
- Stringent workflow processes – all material follows an organized flow of goods from receipt through kitting, assembly, packaging, and shipping.
- ISO9001:2015 certified – PPS is certified to ISO9001:2015, following strict quality policies with top-down involvement, including continual employee training, cross-training, and detailed work instructions.
- ERP system – our Enterprise Resource Planning system provides lot code traceability from receipt through shipping with real time inventory management and complete accountability of all customer supplied materials.
- On time delivery – PPS boasts high on time deliveries for companies of all sizes including some of the largest Fortune 100 companies. We focus on total customer satisfaction and streamlined operations to reduce lead times and practice Value Stream Mapping procedures to eliminate any bottlenecks in all processes.
- FDA certified clean room – our clean room is FDA certified and we are experienced in many healthcare packaging and medical kitting procedures.
PPS is set apart from other medical kitting service providers with our experience, resources, and staff and our not-for-profit status, allowing us flexibility not achievable with other providers. Contact us to learn more about our medical kitting solutions and how to improve your medical kitting and assembly supply chain.