Kit Inventory Management with parent and child components

[S-G]

Hi, just trying to get some advise on how to start creating an inventory managements base on airtable. We provide kits with have their own unique indentfying number - and each kit contains devices which we record the serial numbers of - they belong to each individual kit. 
Is there a way to build this out so that the Kit ID "contains" the unique devices? But still make them moveable and flexible ? 
We also will need to track stock that has not yet been built into a kit - but all with have unique serial numbers. 

Many thanks for any insights! 

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hmm, really depends on the use case.  On the surface it sounds like you'd just need two linked tables: "Kit" and "Devices"; each "Kit" record would have its own number, the same as each "Device" record, and you'd link them up appropriately

But if say, you want to track when Devices get moved out of Kits and by who, then you'd want to have a junction table between them instead

If you could talk more about your use case I can try to help!

[S-G]

Hey, thanks so much for your reply. I had not heard of a junction table - I will look into this! Thank you!

So usually once a kit has been built, it always stays together with the orginal devices - it won't be a super common instance that it gets moved around - and if it does, as long as we can put a note or something of the sort just to say why that would be sufficient. In general a kits "location" is what will change - so for example:
1. We would build and assemble the unique kit ID with the relevant devices with their serial numbers
2. We would mark that kit status as "assembled" so we know it is ready to be used
3. When required we would "deploy" the kit to a location/org (Status = Deployed)- usually we have multi-level locations (so org is X, hub is Y and current location is Z) 
4. Occasionally kits are returned so we may say the status of that kit is now "Returned" 

The "Kits" themselves are more just a box with a barcode on them and a way to group the components together - i guess it gets complex because we will also want to manage stock, so we will have devices listed with their unique ID's that won't yet be built into kits - or wont belong to any "parent barcode" so to speak... 

I feel like its quite complicated and maybe I'm wanting to much from what is possible!

Thank you for your reply! 

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hmm...if you don't want to track historical data of when a kit got moved to different locations, you could just do this with Kit and Devices table and it'd be pretty straightforward and not that complicated.  For the devices that aren't part of a kit you'd just add them into the Device table without linking them to a Kit

Do you want to track historical data?

[S-G]

I think we would need to track historical data actually T_T 

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hahaha don't worry it's totally doable.  We'll just do it with a junction table.  I'll put together a small example and link it tomorrow!

[TheTimeSavingCo · Accepted solution]

Here

So you'll have Kits:

Devices:

And movement:

And for display purposes you could use formula / rollup / lookup fields to see who currently has the kit or where it's currently located:

   

[S-G]

This is really cool! Thank you so much for taking the time to show all this!