Automations slow to respond... possible solutions? hardware improvements?

This is an easier to get installed z-wave mesh network graph:

Network healing should occur every night by default. So it is unlikely to help without relocating or adding a few devices.

The other thing to check is your OZW log (bottom of the integrations page). It’s a pain to read but may show a sensor is spamming the network and slowing everything down.

On a small network with 6 devices mostly connected directly to the zstick in a raspberry pi I never got switching latency lower than 3-4 seconds. I’ve since moved to wifi devices and find the latency less than a second.