Boost Uptime and Throughput: A Short Playbook for Busy Operations

A practical, 7-point playbook to keep crews moving, reduce near-miss slowdowns, and protect people and assets without adding meetings. Use it to shave micro-stops, make handoffs predictable, and keep lanes and pinch points behaving.

1) Standardize Shift Handoffs

When every crew starts with the same picture, you avoid rework and “where is X?” walks.

Do this:

• One board, three rows: Safety issues (people), Asset status (machines/racking/columns), Flow notes (lanes, pinch points, hot orders).
• Green/Amber/Red tags for lanes, critical posts/rack ends, and equipment. Amber = watch; Red = do not use.
• 2-minute sweep at end of shift: clear lanes, wipe mirrors, re-hang signs, and update the board.
• Add a QR to the board for supervisors so updates are visible from a phone.

In practice: A beverage plant’s PM crew added a red tag to a bent rack end and marked a temporary one-way around it on the board. The next shift started on time-no scramble at the first pick.

 

2) Define the Happy Path for People, Pallets, and Tools

If everyone knows the default routes, they stop inventing shortcuts that cross through pinch points.

Make the default obvious:

• Floor arrows for pallet routes; footprints for walk lanes. Avoid narrow walkways that force single-file squeeze.
• Sized staging squares (pallet footprint + 6-8") outside the turning sweep by 18-24".
• Door landing zones: 6-8 ft clear on drive sides so people don’t step straight into traffic.
• One map on the board showing the happy paths and the three most important “yields” (who yields to whom).

In practice: A Florida 3PL mapped a clear tool route to maintenance and stopped seeing carts cutting through a blind corner by the charge bay.

 

3) Set Visual WIP Limits to Prevent Pileups

Overstuffed areas cause side-steps, blind merges, and scuffs on posts and rack ends.

Quick controls:

·         Caps on staging: “Max 4 pallets” printed inside the square; overflow goes to a secondary zone.

·         FIFO arrows: entrance/exit arrows on each buffer so pallets don’t spin or backtrack.

·         Daily audit dot: green if limits held; amber if exceeded; red if exceeded + path blocked.

In practice: Printing “Max 3” into the inbound square at Dock 4 removed chronic backing and shaved minutes per trailer in an Indiana logistics center.

 

4) Hot-spot Response: 10-minute Countermeasures

Treat recurring pinch-point friction like a mini kaizen - fast, visible, and testable.

Template:

Name the friction (e.g., “blind merge at Aisle 7 mouth”).

Pick one measure: stop bar + “Horn Here”, convex mirror at driver eye height, move square 18-24", re-line crossing.

Time-box for two weeks, then keep or revert based on near-miss and slowdown tallies.

In practice: A stop bar and mirror inside a dock mouth cut “nose-outs” by half over 10 days; the pilot was made permanent in the weekly review.

 

5) Keep Consumables Flowing (Kanban Basics)

Running out of tape, mirror wipes, or floor paint means the fixes slip - and flow degrades.

Make replenishment brain-dead simple:

• Two-bin kanban for floor tape, reflective bands, wipes, and small hardware (mirror clamps, sign screws).
• Reorder cards with item, vendor, and min/max.
• Touch-up cart parked near the busiest aisle (pads, degreaser, tape, small rollers, epoxy cups).

In practice: A simple two-bin for tape and wipes kept stop bars crisp; near-miss tallies dropped without a meeting.

6) Micro-maintenance to Prevent Stoppages

Five minutes now beats 45 minutes later.

Daily micro-windows:

Mirrors: 30 sec wipe at blind corners during low traffic.

Lines & bars: replace 3-5 ft sections that peel - don’t wait for full relines.

Signage: straighten and remove duplicates; keep ≤3 rules per sign (“Stop • Horn • Yield”).

Battery/charge bays: cords off floors; clear a 3-ft channel through.

In practice: A rotating “flow champion” handled wipes and quick tape patches at lunch - visible slowdowns in the afternoon round vanished.

 

7) Where Column Protection Helps

Use padded column protection when:

Near misses or hits repeat in the same zone. IE more than 1 in 30 days at a single post or column.

Posts sit in the sweep. Columns within 12 - 24" of turning paths, hypotenuse shortcuts, or staging squares. Consider ‘sweep’ from powered trucks, but also from hand carts exiting an aisle.

Near-misses create slowdowns. Drivers braking around a post to “thread the needle,” stacking up traffic.

Columns are located near ‘stopping point’. Stand-on powered vehicles and even hand-carts can ‘roll-on’ causing the potential for ‘crush-risk’.

In wider walkways where pedestrian attention rates can be poor. Column pads are a great way of preventing ‘human bumps’.

Visibility and culture ‘matter’. Some of the most forward-thinking US businesses protect all columns - in part, to visibly demonstrate their ‘safety first’ culture to all colleagues.

Learn more about Armbright Column Protection

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Quick reference: people, assets, and traffic segregation (tie-in checklist)

People

Walk lanes continuous and wide enough (no single-file squeeze).

Crosswalks at walk/drive interfaces; vehicles have a stop bar before them.

“Horn Here” cues at blind corners.

Assets

Posts/rack ends/door frames have high-contrast bands at strike and eye heights.

Structural columns protected where hits repeat or hesitation causes slowdowns.

Paint and tapes are maintained in micro-windows.

Traffic segregation

Staging squares sized to pallets and kept out of the sweep by 18-24".

One-way pilots in tight aisles; merges marked and horned.

Battery bays with cords off floors and a clear travel channel.

What to do next

Pick one high-impact zone (pinch point, dock lane, or aisle end) that creates slowdowns or repeat scuffs.

Apply one people control and one asset control (e.g., stop bar + convex mirror; reflective banding or padded post protection).

Run for two weeks; micro-log near-misses, scuffs, and slowdowns; adjust once (mirror angle/line placement).