Methodology
Everything that decides your score is published here. If you disagree with a rule, you can see exactly how it affects you, and we want to hear about it.
What the Index measures
The Index measures management practice: the routines, methods and foundations a plant uses to see its losses, react to them and improve. It does not measure output, OEE, cost or quality results directly, because those depend on things a plant manager does not control, such as product mix, equipment age, sector and order book.
Practice is a leading indicator. A plant with strong practice and a weak OEE usually improves; a plant with a good OEE and weak practice usually drifts. That is why a plant can score well on the Index while its results are still catching up, and why the reverse also happens.
The Index is designed for a single site. Groups with several plants assess each site separately; group-level practices such as shared definitions are picked up in individual questions.
Six pillars
The thirty questions are grouped into six pillars of five questions each. All six carry the same weight.
| Pillar | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Performance visibility | How losses are captured, how fast a line knows it is behind, one definition of performance, trust in the numbers, who sees them. |
| Daily management and shift routines | Tiered meetings, shift handover, visual management at the line, escalation rules, leader standard work. |
| Loss and downtime problem-solving | How losses are prioritised, root-cause method, verification of countermeasures, maintenance and production together, changeovers and short stops. |
| Improvement engine | How improvement is organised, action closure, work standards, validation of gains, sustainment. |
| People and frontline ownership | Skills management, operator involvement, team-leader development, recognition, listening to the frontline. |
| Data and connectivity foundations | Machine connectivity, reference data, integration, data access rules, basic shop-floor cybersecurity. |
Anchored answers
Each question offers five answers. Every answer describes something observable, so two people from the same plant walking the same line should pick the same one. There is no 'agree / disagree' scale and no answer that rewards good intentions.
Answer 1 describes the absence of a practice; answer 5 describes a practice that is standard, checked and spread. The steps in between are deliberately uneven: moving from 3 to 4 usually means a practice that is written down becomes one that is used under pressure, on every shift.
If two answers seem true, choose the lower one. An answer counts only if it holds on every shift and on the bottleneck line, which is also what the jury checks during verification.
Score and level
Each answer is worth 1 to 5 points. The FEI score is (average answer − 1) ÷ 4 × 1,000, rounded to the nearest whole number, so a plant answering 1 everywhere scores 0 and a plant answering 5 everywhere scores 1,000. Each pillar gets its own index on the same 0–1,000 scale from its five answers.
| Score | Level | In one sentence |
|---|---|---|
| 0–199 | 1 Reactive | Performance is managed from memory and from the last crisis. |
| 200–399 | 2 Aware | Some losses are measured and some routines exist, but data is late and methods vary. |
| 400–599 | 3 Structured | Definitions, routines and methods are written down and followed within the shift. |
| 600–799 | 4 Proactive | Losses are seen within the hour and fixes are verified, standardised and sustained. |
| 800–1,000 | 5 Excellent | The system runs on trusted real-time data and practice spreads between lines and sites. |
Weakest-pillar rule. The overall level cannot be more than one level above the level of the weakest pillar. A plant with a score of 650 whose weakest pillar sits at Level 2 is shown as Level 3, with a note explaining why. A management system is only as reliable as its weakest part: excellent routines fed by unreliable data, or excellent data that nobody acts on, do not produce Level 4 results.
Profile patterns
Besides the score, the report looks at the shape of your answers and names the pattern that fits best, when one does. The five patterns are:
- Strong routines, blind data: meetings and problem-solving are in place but run on late or partial information.
- Data-rich, routine-poor: losses are visible but seeing them does not yet trigger timely action.
- Firefighting: most energy goes into reacting, with little rhythm to daily management.
- Improvement without sustainment: projects start but results slip back.
- Balanced foundation: all six pillars sit at a similar level.
Each pattern comes with a short explanation of where the fastest gain usually lies for plants in that situation.
Your three biggest gaps and the 90-day moves
The report takes your three weakest pillars and, within each, the question with the lowest answer. For each of those three points it shows the move that takes a plant from its current answer to the next one. The moves are written as concrete actions that fit in 90 days with the resources most plants already have.
Every move in the model is published on the pillar pages, so your team can read the full path from level 1 to level 5 for each practice.
Cohorts and benchmarks
When enough plants have answered, your report will also show where you sit against plants like yours: the same region, the same sector and a similar size. A comparison is shown only when the cohort holds at least five plants from at least three different companies. Until then the report says so plainly, rather than comparing you with a handful of plants.
Benchmarks are always aggregated. For ratios such as OEE or first-pass yield, the assessment only ever asks for a range, never a volume, a capacity or a price, and no published figure can identify a plant or a company. These rules follow competition-law guidance on exchanging information between companies.
From self-assessment to verification
A self-assessment is honest but untested. Plants at Level 3 or above can ask for verification: they share a few pieces of evidence and spend 45 minutes on video with two jurors, who check the answers against what they see. The verified score can go down as well as up.
Verified plants can appear in the public register if they wish, and are eligible for recognition in their league.
Versioning and review
This is version 1.0 of the model, published in September 2026. Questions, answers and weights are reviewed once a year with the juries. When the model changes, reports keep the version they were produced with, so a plant's progress is compared like for like.
Comments on the method are welcome at info@factoryexcellenceawards.com. We publish every change and the reason for it on this page.
Questions
Why do all six pillars carry the same weight?
Because none of them works alone. Equal weights keep the model simple to check by hand, and the weakest-pillar rule stops a strong area from hiding a weak one. Weights will be reviewed with the juries once enough verified data exists.
Can I see how my score was calculated?
Yes. The report lists your answer to every question and the pillar indices. With the formula on this page you can recalculate the score yourself, and the offline Excel kit does the same calculation in visible formulas.
Does a high OEE raise my score?
No. The optional OEE range you give is used only to build aggregated benchmarks. Your score comes entirely from the thirty practice questions.