{"id":3701,"date":"2026-10-08T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nekos.fi\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2026-10-16T11:29:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T11:29:34","slug":"how-to-conduct-a-plastic-crate-handling-audit-in-your-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nekos.fi\/en\/how-to-conduct-a-plastic-crate-handling-audit-in-your-facility\/","title":{"rendered":"How to conduct a plastic crate handling audit in your facility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Running a plastic crate handling audit gives you a clear, evidence-based picture of how your facility manages crates from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave. Without this baseline, inefficiencies tend to accumulate quietly, bottlenecks go unnoticed, floor space gets wasted, and hygiene risks build up over time. A structured audit changes that. This guide walks you through every stage of the process so you can identify exactly where your crate handling operation is performing well and where it needs attention.<\/p>\n<p>Whether you operate in food production, retail logistics, or industrial manufacturing, the steps below apply directly to your facility. Follow them in order, document everything as you go, and you will finish with a prioritised action plan you can act on immediately. Nekos specialises in automated plastic crate and tote handling systems for exactly these kinds of operations, and the audit framework below reflects the areas where improvements consistently deliver the greatest results.<\/p>\n<h2>What to prepare before starting the audit<\/h2>\n<p>Before you walk the floor, gather the information and tools you need to conduct the audit properly. Going in without preparation leads to incomplete data and missed problem areas. Treat this stage as your foundation: everything that follows depends on it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Current facility layout drawings or floor plans showing crate movement zones<\/li>\n<li>Existing throughput records, shift reports, or production logs<\/li>\n<li>Maintenance and breakdown history for handling equipment<\/li>\n<li>Hygiene and cleaning records for your washing process<\/li>\n<li>A checklist or audit template you will use to record observations consistently<\/li>\n<li>A measuring tool for floor space assessments (tape measure or laser distance meter)<\/li>\n<li>A stopwatch or timer for throughput measurements<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Assign a small audit team that includes at least one person familiar with daily operations and one person who can observe objectively without assumptions. Brief the team on what you are measuring and why, so observations stay consistent across the facility.<\/p>\n<h2>Map your current crate flow from intake to dispatch<\/h2>\n<p>Start by tracing the physical journey a crate takes through your facility. Walk the entire route yourself rather than relying on documentation alone: the reality on the floor often differs from what is written on paper. This step gives you the foundation for your entire internal logistics audit.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Begin at the intake point where crates first enter the facility, whether from trucks, pallets, or roll cages.<\/li>\n<li>Follow the crate through every handling stage: receiving, depalletising, conveying, washing, storage, filling or packing, and dispatch.<\/li>\n<li>Mark each stage on your floor plan and note the equipment involved, the manual tasks performed, and any points where crates wait or accumulate.<\/li>\n<li>Identify any informal workarounds, places where operators have adapted the process to compensate for a limitation in the system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>After completing the walk-through, you should have a complete, annotated map of your crate handling process. If you find stages that are unclear or inconsistent between shifts, that inconsistency is itself a finding worth recording. A well-mapped flow makes every subsequent step of the audit faster and more accurate.<\/p>\n<h2>Measure throughput and capacity at each handling stage<\/h2>\n<p>With your crate flow mapped, the next step is to quantify what is actually happening at each stage. Observation tells you where crates move; measurement tells you how well. This is where your material handling audit starts producing numbers you can act on.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Time the throughput at each stage during a representative production period: count crates processed per hour and compare this against the equipment&#8217;s rated capacity.<\/li>\n<li>Record where queues form and how long crates wait before moving to the next stage.<\/li>\n<li>Note any stages where equipment runs below capacity due to upstream or downstream constraints.<\/li>\n<li>Check whether depalletising and stacking equipment handles crate stacks reliably at the heights and speeds your operation requires.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Compare your measured throughput against your operational targets. A stage running consistently below its rated capacity often signals a mechanical issue, an operator training gap, or a mismatch between equipment design and actual crate dimensions. Stages where crates accumulate are strong indicators of a bottleneck that is slowing the entire line. Facilities looking to address these constraints through automation can explore Nekos&#8217;s plastic crate handling systems, which are designed to improve material flow and reduce throughput bottlenecks across the entire handling line.<\/p>\n<h2>Assess storage utilisation and floor space efficiency<\/h2>\n<p>Storage is one of the most commonly underestimated areas in a crate handling facility audit. Facilities often hold far more floor space than necessary simply because crates are not stored at height or in dense configurations. This step quantifies how efficiently you are using the space you have.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Measure the total floor area dedicated to crate storage, including buffer zones and aisle space.<\/li>\n<li>Count the maximum number of crates currently stored and calculate your crates-per-square-metre figure.<\/li>\n<li>Assess the maximum stack height in use and compare it to the available ceiling height in the storage area.<\/li>\n<li>Identify whether your current system allows first-in, first-out rotation or whether crate age is difficult to track.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If your storage area is frequently at capacity or regularly causes flow disruptions, the issue is likely density rather than total space. Modern buffer storage systems can dramatically increase the number of crates stored in the same footprint by using sequential row stacking directly on the floor, even in low-ceiling environments. If your audit reveals a significant gap between available height and actual stack height, that gap represents recoverable capacity.<\/p>\n<h2>Check hygiene compliance and washing process performance<\/h2>\n<p>In food and beverage environments especially, the washing stage is critical to both product safety and regulatory compliance. A plastic crate audit is incomplete without a thorough review of how crates are cleaned and whether the process consistently meets the hygiene standards your operation requires.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Review your cleaning records to confirm that wash cycles are completed at the correct temperature, duration, and chemical concentration for your crate type.<\/li>\n<li>Inspect crates at the exit point of the washer for visible soil residue, moisture retention, or damage that could harbour bacteria.<\/li>\n<li>Verify that the washing line capacity matches your peak throughput: a washer that cannot keep up with incoming crates creates a hygiene risk if crates are stored dirty.<\/li>\n<li>Check that pre-wash, wash, rinse, and drying stages are all functioning correctly and that maintenance is up to date on the washing equipment.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>After this review, you should be able to confirm whether your washing process is consistently delivering clean, dry crates at the rate your operation demands. If throughput at the washer is a limiting factor, or if crates are leaving the washer with moisture that causes downstream issues, document these as priority findings. We work with Numafa Cleaning and Automation to integrate washing systems directly into crate handling lines, which can resolve capacity and hygiene gaps simultaneously.<\/p>\n<h2>Identify gaps and prioritise improvements<\/h2>\n<p>Bring together everything you have documented across the previous steps. At this stage, your crate handling process audit converts raw observations into a structured improvement plan. The goal is not to fix everything at once, but to focus resources where the impact will be greatest.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>List every gap or inefficiency identified, grouped by stage: intake, conveying, storage, washing, filling, and dispatch.<\/li>\n<li>Rate each issue by its operational impact: consider throughput loss, labour cost, hygiene risk, floor space waste, and equipment reliability.<\/li>\n<li>Separate quick wins (adjustments to settings, operator training, maintenance tasks) from structural improvements (equipment upgrades, layout changes, automation).<\/li>\n<li>Sequence your improvement actions so that upstream fixes are implemented before downstream ones, resolving a bottleneck at the washer, for example, before expanding storage capacity.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>A completed audit should leave you with a prioritised list where the top three to five actions are clearly defined, assigned to an owner, and tied to a measurable outcome. Share the findings with your operations and maintenance teams so the improvement process has broad support. Repeat the audit at a defined interval, annually is a reasonable baseline, or after any significant change to your crate handling process, to track progress and catch new inefficiencies before they grow. If your audit has surfaced bottlenecks, storage constraints, or hygiene gaps that require a more systematic solution, <a href=\"https:\/\/nekos.fi\/en\/contact\/\">contact Nekos<\/a> to discuss how automated crate handling and intralogistics systems can be configured to meet your facility&#8217;s specific requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn how to audit plastic crate handling in your facility and build a prioritised improvement plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized-fi"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to conduct a plastic crate handling audit in your facility - Nekos Oy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A plastic crate handling audit reveals hidden inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and hygiene risks. 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