Besides grouping, is there a way to link shapes together?Separate yet linked.

Some shapes consist of many parts with different colors and cutouts. To keep them separate, I have to group them.

But sometimes, when I ungroup all the objects on the page, everything falls apart and gets messy.

So, I use the Pathfinder to merge simple, single-color shapes.
But for complex shapes with strokes and different colors, this doesn’t seem to work—merging them just combines them into a single object.

Is there a way to solve this problem? It’s a bit like Smart Objects in Photoshop.

Please see the attachment for a sample.