Book a Production Floor Audit and walk away knowing which gaps in your production process are costing you repeat orders, and the exact steps to close them.
Your crate operation is running on memory and spreadsheets. Here is exactly what that is costing you, and what to fix first.
You are taking on orders you cannot accurately quote a delivery date for.
You have been making crates for years. The business works. Clients come back.
But when a customer calls and asks when their order ships, someone has to check. Walk to the floor. Ask the one person who tracks it all in their head. Pull up a spreadsheet that only makes sense to the person who built it.
The answer takes five minutes. Maybe longer. And when it finally comes, it is a best guess.
If you run a bigger order volume than you did three years ago, that delay is costing you more than time. It is costing you client confidence. Repeat orders go to the manufacturer who can answer in seconds, not the one who has to go find out.
The root problem is not your team. It is not your product. It is that your production floor is running on tribal knowledge and manual tracking, and there is no system that gives you or your clients a straight answer.
Every crate manufacturer who has solved this found the same thing underneath: the floor runs on the memory of one person, and the business has quietly built itself around that dependency without realising it.
What we found when we audited National Crate.
Here is what we found when we audited National Crate, a 24-person US crate manufacturer running roughly 20 orders a week.
Before the system, every quote was built by hand. Materials, labour, pricing and margins calculated manually, taking 30 to 40 minutes per order. Orders were entered into a spreadsheet, then re-entered into a separate local system. Errors ran at around 1 in 20 orders. When materials were needed on the floor, employees spent 10 to 20 minutes searching the facility for what they needed. Management had no picture of what was in production, who was working on what, or where any order sat in the process.
Because of that, the business was administratively heavy, slow to quote, and flying blind on production. A spike in orders would expose every one of those gaps simultaneously.
Until they built a system that connected everything: quoting, production, inventory, and shipping, inside a single platform accessible from any device on the floor.
Every week since, management can see every work order, every workstation, and every employee's activity in real time. Quotes go out in under 10 minutes. Materials are located in under 5 seconds. And the order error rate has dropped to near zero.
Before
After
30 to 40 minutes to build a quote
Under 10 minutes, calculated automatically
1 in 20 orders had errors
Near-zero error rate
10 to 20 minutes to find materials on the floor
Under 5 seconds with bin-level inventory tracking
30 to 40 minutes to build a quote
30 to 40 minutes to build a quote
No visibility into production progress
Under 10 minutes, calculated automatically
10 to 15 hours per week in admin
Eliminated through end-to-end workflow automation
What crate manufacturers who go through the Production Floor Audit consistently find:
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At least one critical production step that has no backup if the person who owns it is out
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Delivery estimates that are based on experience rather than data, meaning they are accurate until they are not
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No single system that connects quoting, production, and shipping into one picture
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A floor that works well when order volume is steady, and starts to crack when volume spikes
The Solution
The Production Floor Audit shows you exactly where your operation is fragile, and what to fix first.
This is not a software demo. It is not a generic operations review. It is a structured diagnostic built specifically for crate manufacturers, focused on the gap between how your floor runs today and how it needs to run when you want to quote delivery dates with confidence.
What You Get
Production Dependency Map
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A clear picture of every step in your floor that relies on one person's knowledge, and what happens to delivery when that person is unavailable
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Delivery Accuracy Review
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An honest assessment of how your current delivery estimates are made, where the gaps are, and what is making your quotes less reliable than they should be
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Floor to Office Gap Analysis
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Where the disconnect lives between what the floor knows and what the office can tell a customer, and the specific process that is creating that gap
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Single Point of Failure Report
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The three to five risks in your current operation that would cause the most disruption if they were removed tomorrow
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90-Day Fix Roadmap
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A prioritised list of what to address first, second, and third, specific to how your floor runs, not a generic template
How It Works
Simple. Direct. Built for manufacturing owners who do not have time for a six-month engagement.
Step 1: Book and Complete the Pre-Audit Brief
After booking, you receive a short questionnaire covering your current production process, your typical order volume, how delivery dates are currently set, and where you believe the floor is most fragile. This is completed before the session so no time is wasted on context-setting during the audit itself.
Step 2: The 90-Minute Production Floor Audit
A diagnostic conversation walking through your operation from order intake to shipment. Andrew asks direct questions about how production decisions are made, who holds the knowledge, where the floor and the office disconnect, and what happens when order volume spikes. Built on the National Crate engagement and every similar floor Andrew has worked on.
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Step 3: Your Production Floor Audit Report
You receive a written report covering your dependency map, delivery accuracy gaps, single points of failure, and a prioritised 90-day roadmap. Whether you engage Aether Automation to build the fix or not, you will know exactly what is fragile and what to address first.
Is This Right For You
This is for you if:
This is not for you if:
You manufacture crates and run your production floor with fewer than 50 employees
You are already running a production management system that your whole floor trusts
Delivery date estimates rely on one person's knowledge or a spreadsheet nobody else fully understands
You are looking for a generic IT or software review unrelated to production
You want repeat customers and suspect unreliable delivery is costing you some of them
You are not willing to look honestly at how production decisions are currently made
Order volume has grown but your production tracking system has not kept pace
You are already running a production management system that your whole floor trusts
Delivery date estimates rely on one person's knowledge or a spreadsheet nobody else fully understands
You want a solution that does not require any change to how your floor currently runs
You are ready to act on what you find
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Book Your Production Floor Audit
90 minutes. One-on-one with Andrew. Walk away knowing exactly where your floor is fragile and what to fix first.
$2,500 USD
The audit fee is credited in full toward any production system build with Aether Automation. If you move forward, you pay nothing extra for the audit — it comes off the project cost.
If you do not move forward, you still walk away with a dependency map, a delivery accuracy review, your single points of failure, and a 90-day roadmap specific to how your floor runs.
P.S. The audit fee is credited toward any full production system build with Aether Automation. Worst case: you get a clear picture of exactly what is fragile on your floor and a roadmap to fix it. Best case: you get a free audit and someone who has built this for a crate manufacturer before to build it with you.
About Andrew
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Founded Aether Automation in 2018. Built production and operations systems for manufacturers across North America.
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Most recent engagement: built the full production management system for National Crate, a 24-person US crate manufacturer running 20 orders a week. Quoting time dropped from 30 to 40 minutes to under 10. Order errors fell from 1 in 20 to near zero. Admin workload reduced by 10 to 15 hours per week. Full production floor visibility introduced for the first time.
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Every system is built to match how that floor actually runs. Not a generic ERP. Not a 12-month project.
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Based in Duncan, British Columbia. Works with US crate manufacturers remotely.
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One question Andrew asks every new client: when a customer asks when their order ships, how long does it take you to get a confident answer?