Manufacturing KPI examples by category
| Area | Examples |
|---|---|
| Safety | Recordable incidents, near misses reported, hazards closed on time, safety observations per week |
| Quality | First pass yield, defects per million, customer complaints, scrap and rework, audit pass rate |
| Delivery | Schedule adherence, on-time in full, throughput against plan, OEE, changeover time |
| Cost | Labour hours per unit, material yield, energy per unit, overtime, maintenance cost per asset |
| People | Attendance, skills matrix coverage, training due, improvement ideas raised and implemented |
Leading and lagging measures
Lagging KPIs report results after the fact (incidents, complaints, cost). Leading KPIs track the behaviours and conditions that produce the results (near misses reported, audits completed, preventive maintenance on time). A board with only lagging measures tells you what happened; leading measures tell you what to do today.
Choosing KPIs at each level
- Tier 1 (frontline): three to six measures the team can influence this shift, updated per shift.
- Tier 2 (area): the same categories rolled up, plus escalated issues and project progress.
- Tier 3 (site): site-level results against strategic goals, with trends over weeks and months.
The measures should connect: a Tier 3 OEE target should be traceable to Tier 1 downtime and minor-stop measures on specific lines.
Common mistakes
- Too many KPIs, so none gets attention.
- Measures nobody on the floor can influence.
- Numbers reported monthly, weeks after the problem.
- KPIs shown without the actions being taken on them, so a red stays red.
- Targets set without a plan for reaching them.
Displaying KPIs
A KPI only works when the people who can move it see it daily. On a tier board each measure shows target, actual and trend, with red and green visible from across the area, and the open actions beside it. A dashboard for management can draw from the same data, but the board at the work comes first.