Product Kit

Definition

A product kit is a grouping of components of a media issue or of several different media issues for periodic shipping in Media Product Sales and Distribution or in Press Distribution.

Use

Using product kits allows you to process individual components of a media issue separately in shipping and to group media issues that are to be delivered together for shipping. You can pack the individual components of a product kit together and perform shipping for them at a specified time in advance of the publication date. The diagram below contains examples of some possible uses of product kits.

Subdividing media issues

You can record individual components of a media product separately and then group them in the product kit. In this case, you can time shipping of certain components of each media issue separately from the main component (for example, the common part of a newspaper).

Example Example

The Culture and Family components of the newspaper News , which do not contain information for specific dates, are shipped inexpensively by train one day before the publication date. The common part of the newspaper, containing news for specific dates, is shipped by airmail on the publication date itself. Once they have reached their destination, the components are united to form complete media issues.

End of the example.
Combining media issues

Media issues that are to be shipped together periodically as a unit of sale can be grouped as a product kit.

Example Example

The magazine Entertainment is sold with a CD on Wednesdays. These two media issues are sealed in cellophane together before shipping.

End of the example.

Integration

Product kit and issue mix

The system manages the product kit together with the media issue mix as an alternative bill of material. The alternative bill of material is created by the function Create Issue Mixes . This means it is important whether or not issue mixes have already been created when product kits are maintained. A traffic light symbol indicates the following mix statuses for each product kit:

The product kit was changed after the mixes were created. The alternative bill of material may no longer match the current product kit. You should repeat mix generation.

Mixes have not yet been created for the main component of the product kit.

The mixes have been created and the alternative bill of material matches the current product kit.