Approaching the crematory your firm uses, do you see a respectfully presented facility dedicated for cremation, a garage, or an embarrassingly rundown building? With more than 2,600 crematories in the United States, the standards and procedures followed are across the board.

  What if your consumer saw the crematory you use? It should foster dignity and respect toward all human remains entrusted to the facility. And the holding area should be kept clean and secure at all times. This reflects on your firm, even if your consumers aren’t in the habit of inspecting your third-party facilities.

  In fact, more and more crematories have installed witnessing areas that allow the authorizing agents, family or significant others to witness the container/casket placed into the cremation chamber. This can be a great benefit for the individuals attending the witnessing.

  Many other upgraded procedures in a crematory can help the deceased’s loved ones as well as a firm’s reputation. For example, progressive crematory owners have invested in auto loaders for their crematories. The auto loader respectfully and gently places the container/casket into the cremator chamber, rather than someone manually pushing the container/casket into the chamber.

  Another procedure dedicated facilities use is employing a high-temperature vacuum after the cremation process has taken place and the chamber has been cleaned with clean-out brushes. By using a high-temperature vacuum, operators are able to retrieve five-to-20 percent more cremated human remains to include with those manually collected. This process also reduces commingling.

  While many different styles of processing equipment are manufactured today, after each processing the area and equipment must be cleaned. And all recoverable cremated human remains must be added to the already processed cremated human remains, allowing the crematory to return the largest amount to the authorizing agent.

  Further, every crematory must have a residual container. If a crematory does not have a residual container, they are placing cremated human remains in the trash! And regardless of how diligent the crematory operators are, there will be some residual or cremated human remains uncollected into the temporary container/urn.

  Cremators are mechanical equipment and need regular maintenance. Some of the maintenance can be done by the operator, but some must be done by the manufacturer. To ensure the equipment runs properly this maintenance must be performed on a regular basis. Hence, firms should choose crematories with a routine maintenance program in effect.

  Lastly, all crematory operators should be certified through national associations or manufacturers. In fact, this certification is not just for operators of cremators; anyone in the death care profession who deals with cremation should be certified as it provides additional information to become a cremation specialist and perform the inspection.

  Considering these standards and upgrades, price should never influence a firm’s choice in crematories. Rather, the deciding factors should be professionalism and treatment of human remains with dignity and respect.