I'm currently running an institute setup in my settlements, any people assigned to food get vault suits, any people assigned to shops get Institite jumpers/lab coats and the person assigned to the clinic gets the head division coat, any people assigned to guard duty on the guard posts get courser uniforms, and the people doing miscellaneous work or scavenging station work get Institute clean room suits. The only question now is what should I use for the people assigned to supply lines?

It doesn't quite fit the Institute theme, but I'm partial to using the clean Postman outfit & hat for my supply line folks.

Full set of armor, synth

These could certainly work, where can I find more postman uniforms though?

Using your current system, I would suggest also giving Courser uniforms to the provisioners as they also need to protect themselves. Alternately, synth armor (or put synth armor on your guards and courser uniforms on your provisioners).

Alternately don't put them in anything special -- they're going into the outside world and need to blend in, much like gen 3 synths.

If I did it, I would rework things, given that Institute lab coats come color-coded, I would use this and do things this way:

Farmers - Plain Institute jumpers

Merchants - Different colored Institute lab coats for different purposes: orange for general store, green for food/drink, black for weapons and armor, blue for clothing, red for medic. Division head if it's a tier 3 store.

Scavengers - Yellow Institute lab coats (yellow is engineering)

Guards: Courser uniforms

Provisioners: Clean Room suits.

I think to get enough suits you'd probably have to pickpocket/reverse pick pocket institute people but it could be doable.

Excellent post I'm going to switch my system to this, I can get enough by simply purchasing suits from the Institute I think

Well, I must confess that on the PC I just used the console to add the Postman Uniform and Postman Hat to my inventory when needed...

player.additem 00146174 1

player.additem 001F9790 1

...respectively.

Women in Road Leathers. Men in harnesses.

Provisioners with combat shotguns (tricked out), guards with mini-guns, lasers and plasma rifles. All of them get molotavs and grenades.

Don't care about where they're working once I've assigned them. I figure, once I've assigned them a bed and a job, I put them in an outfit and that's how I know I never need to talk to them again.

And now I feel dumb. Really dumb. Which is why this is a such a great community.

It never even occurred to me to dress the settlers in uniforms so that I would know what their job is. This question has vexed me and the answer was right there in my face the whole time.

Not dumb at all!

These folks gave me the idea too. Gotta love 'em.

It looks so much better and cleaner in Institite uniforms, I only wish I could get synths in my settlements too, especially those cute gen 1 synths

Sure it looks cleaner, but not nearly as kinky. Plus it's one of the few ways I ever found to actually make my settlers atractive. Of course that obviously says something about my S&M and leather fetishes.

But vault suits are the kinkiest are the kinkiest apparel in the land

I prefer skin.

You say that like it's a BAD thing, lol.