Standardizing metrics across lines and sites for better decisions

Productivity gains in manufacturing can feel like sand slipping through your fingers. Just when performance improves, new pressures eat into your progress. In this article, we explore how standardization of production metrics drives long-lasting performance at leading companies.

After nearly two decades of slow decline, LNS Research’s Industrial Productivity Index™ surged in 2021-2022 with a promising 22% spike, only to lose more than half of those gains in the following couple of years.

Now, in 2025, manufacturers are facing additional pressure from all angles. Those precious gains of yesterday don’t guarantee stability today or tomorrow. Demand fluctuations, workforce challenges, and volatile costs for supply and inputs are familiar headaches across the board. What’s more, expectations are rising around both quality and traceability, so there are no shortcuts left to take.

In our recent webinar with LNS Research, we explored the initiatives manufacturers can take to overcome productivity struggles.

We started with a simple question: what are the top performers of the industry doing differently?

You can watch the entire webinar with LNS Research here:

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The answers were clear, and one huge success factor for the best-performing manufacturers, particularly in the food and beverage industry, is that they measure everything and standardize production analytics. And as they standardize, they also emphasize data governance.

So, let’s talk about why it works so well.

Shared KPIs set the best manufacturers apart

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. It’s as simple as that.

That’s why aligned performance metrics sit at the heart of the top-performing companies. The leaders have figured out that things go wrong when one site tracks downtime differently than another, or where OEE is defined loosely depending on who’s working what shift. Without common KPIs across regions, plants, and lines, discussions on performance quickly dissolve into poor excuses and petty finger-pointing. But by using common benchmarks based on standardized metrics, improving becomes a disciplined practice.

The best in class adopt and agree on common definitions and metrics, enforce them across sites, and insist on only comparing apples to apples.

Standardizing metrics like OEE transforms them from being just numbers in a vacuum to a foundation for how to make trustworthy comparisons.

Finding this consistency is a true difference-maker. It paints a clear picture of what “good” looks like for everyone, and it gives teams the confidence to go after the gaps with more precision.

Governance is what makes it stick

As fundamental as standardization is, it’s not enough. Plenty of companies draw up the maps and set the rules, only to watch it all slip back into chaos as soon as the next wave of priorities hits.

The top performers, however, treat standardization as part of a governance framework and something that’s embedded in how they run all their processes and operations. For them, it’s never just another project to check off.

Danish Crown, one of Europe’s largest meat producers, has built such a framework. At its core is the principle of people, processes, and product, and they ensure that standard definitions and KPIs are always supported by:

• Guidelines and standards that apply everywhere.
• A focus on training and education keeps teams on the same page.
• Roles and responsibilities clear up accountability.
• Data quality checks so numbers can be trusted.
• Reporting and analytics flow to the right people at the right time.

The effect is simple but powerful, as the data becomes both comparable and truly reliable.

Everyone in the business can look at a number and understand it, because it means the same across all their sites and throughout the entire organization. This has become a game-changer for Danish Crown when managing operations at scale, driving targeted improvements, and benchmarking across dozens of factories.

Governance is what transforms standardization from a temporary initiative into a sustained, competitive advantage.

When metrics become momentum

This isn’t just theoretical musings. During the webinar with LNS Research, Factbird’s own Zak Ostas shared success stories from manufacturers who genuinely focus on making standardization central to their performance culture.

American Meat Companies was his first example. When they approached us, they were hoping to get a deeper understanding of their performance metrics, specifically their uptime, capacity utilization, and throughput. The purpose was to get a detailed overview that would help them plan staffing and shifts in more efficient ways.

With a little bit of help from Factbird, American Meat Companies accessed their live production data and could immediately identify bottlenecks and start categorizing the downtime causes. And perhaps more importantly, the new insights meant that they could take the next steps with confidence – the data was clear, real, and trustworthy for guiding their decisions.

New actions were planned and taken, with the results that speak for themselves. Their OEE1 rose from 28.9% to 36.2% in just three months, and they saw a 27.6% increase in their manned running speed.

Their improvements also gave them new benchmarks. They agreed on new unified internal KPIs, which made sure all their plants and sites were on the same page. And suddenly they had created a level playing field by standardizing their production, and OEE became a shared language across the entire organization.

Curious to see more examples? You can watch the full webinar with LNS Research here: What the successful Food & Beverage manufacturers do differently.

The competitive edge

Standardization may not sound particularly glamorous, but it’s the catalyst behind every success story in modern manufacturing. It lays the foundation for data-driven improvement, and when paired with diligent data governance, it creates a system for success that compounds over time.

Manufacturers that get this right are reaping the rewards and widen the gap to their competition. They spot inefficiencies faster, replicate best practices more effectively, and scale improvements across sites without losing valuable momentum.

For food and beverage companies, where margins are thin and consumer expectations unforgiving, this discipline is the difference between leading the pack and lagging behind.