High-volume days: the standard under pressure

We had days when demand was higher than the forecast.

Drivers had to be called in at short notice. There were times when drivers arrived late. Some of them, in the ramp-up phase, were not yet fully used to the SOPs. And all of that landed on how the loading was organised and on the departure schedule.

That is how I have it written down in my reports from last mile, in June 2025.

On those days I understood something an ordinary day does not show you.

What I have and what I do not

I do not have the date of a specific day, the total number of orders or the exact departure delays. And these were not necessarily holiday days. They were real situations of operational pressure, not a confirmed season.

I do not know which standard broke first when volume rose, and I do not want to make up a ranking without data. There was operational planning of drivers, vehicles and departures, but I do not know of a formal peak plan with capacity levels and special procedures. I also have no confirmed briefing I ran myself before a day like that, and no checklist for preparing it.

And I do not have a concrete decision where I can explain with certainty what I set aside to protect another priority. I will not invent one to make the essay more dramatic.

Where the pressure landed

As Area Manager I had four Shift Leaders and eight Dispatchers. In the daily stand-up we talked about the KPI results, loading problems, delays, safety and operational coordination.

From the documented problems, these were the points that needed attention when the pressure rose:

• how trolleys and loads were organised;
• loading time and keeping to the departure schedule;
• scanning products in their designated zones;
• discipline and safety on the ramp;
• communication between drivers, dispatchers and shift leads.

These are not new problems. They are the same ones that show up on an ordinary day. On the hard day there is just no more time to hide them.

Pressure does not always create the problems. Often it makes them more visible.

Capacity is not a number

On days like that, the first question is usually: how many drivers do we have?

But the sentence that has stayed with me from those reports is a different one: some drivers in ramp-up were not yet fully used to the SOPs. They were there. They were counted. But they could not yet do the work the way the others did.

Capacity is not just the number of people you have available. It is the number of people who can do the work to the standard.

The same goes for vehicles. In August 2025 there was a problem with their availability: a DSP was not using its own vehicles, and the reserve capacity was already planned in. On paper there was a reserve. In practice, the reserve was already taken.

In “Watch how I do it” is not training I wrote about why a new person is not ready just because they have watched someone else do the job. The high-volume day is where that lesson costs the most.

What the hard day reveals

When demand rises, you find out how well the operation has been prepared, how clearly responsibilities have been set and how able people are to apply the standard.

In 6S without a poster I wrote that order is proved on the hard day. This is the same idea, from the side of the plan. A plan that only works when everything goes as forecast is not a plan for the hard day. It is a description of an ordinary one.

Before the big day

Today, to a manager facing the first big day of the season, I would say: do not wait for the volume to rise to find out whether the team is ready. I would recommend five things:

1. Check real capacity, not just the number of drivers planned.
2. Verify that new people have been trained for the process.
3. Decide which standards must not be broken, above all safety and the critical checks.
4. Have a plan for absences, delays and problems with vehicles.
5. Make clear before the shift who decides and who has to be told when the situation changes.

These are my recommendations today, not a historical plan I claim to have carried out in full.

For me, the third point matters most. On the hard day, something will be pushed back. The question is whether you decided beforehand what is never pushed back, or whether you decide it in the middle of the pressure.

You can tick off the list below here and copy it before the shift. After the day, Delay Analyzer separates how much of the delay started at the dock and how much on the road, so the next hard day starts with more than a memory.

The standard is not proved on the day everything goes to plan. It is proved on the day the plan is not enough.