Field notes
Drawing zones that survive a shift change
Zones drawn around today's layout break by Friday. Six rules for defining them on the floor plan so they hold when the yard moves.
AI in the real worldKey takeaways
- Draw zones around what the place is for, not around where things happened to be standing.
- Anchor to fixed architecture: doors, lines, racking uprights, the edge of the slab.
- A zone that needs a paragraph to explain will not survive the shift that inherits it.
- Date every zone and review them after any change to the floor.
Zones get drawn on a Tuesday, around the yard as it looked on Tuesday. By Friday the pallets have moved, the delivery bay has been reorganised, and half the rules are firing on a lane nobody uses any more.
Six rules that hold
- Anchor to architecture, not to stock. Doors and painted lines stay put; pallets do not.
- One intent per zone. A shape that means two things will be edited by someone who only knows one of them.
- Draw on the floor plan, then check the camera view, never the other way round.
- Leave a margin at the boundary; a person straddling an edge should not toggle a rule twice a second.
- Name it after the place, not the rule: 'north dock apron', not 'PPE check 3'.
- Date it, and write who drew it.
The handover test
Show the zone to somebody who was not there when it was drawn and ask them what it is for. If the answer takes more than a sentence, the zone is carrying a decision that should have been written down somewhere a person can read it.
After the floor moves
Any change to racking, traffic routes or lighting should trigger a review of the zones that touch it. Fifteen minutes with the floor plan beats a fortnight of alerts nobody can explain and a supervisor quietly turning the rule off.
Frequently asked
How many zones is too many per camera?
Past four or five, nobody can hold the picture in their head, and overlaps start producing alerts that are technically correct and practically meaningless.
Should zones be copied between similar sites?
Copy the intent, redraw the shape. Two sites with the same layout on paper rarely have the same camera heights, and the shape is downstream of that.
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