In my case, Altium will automatically kick the BOM item to a new line if it identifies that not all of its parameters are the same (including Populate=DNI vs Populate = YES). Sounds like this is not a default feature of Kicad which I do not currently have much experience with. Chris is the expert here.
I think that Chris also recently did a video on assembly drawings. While they are not exactly needed in the process, as you build thousands of assemblies, they are useful because they are the contract between you and the CM, in theory if they violate a requirement in the ASM drawing, you can reject the assembly. This includes things like how to clean the board, strangulate, label, etc.