Why Mid-Market OEE Stays Stuck in the Mid-60s, and Where the Real Leverage Sits
It is Monday morning. The operations’ review starts at 9 a.m. Three plant managers dial in, each with a different overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) number for the same product line. The CFO asks which one is right. Nobody answers, because the honest answer is none of them, and everyone in the room knows it.
This is the meeting. You have sat in it. Your portfolio companies are sitting in it this week.
Across mid-market manufacturing, OEE plateaus in the mid-60s; with regulatory-driven industries like medical and cosmetics ahead of specialty. Leadership suspects the real number is worse — upon implementing automated systematic measurement, OEE may drop an additional 10%-25% — and boards are pushing for the gap to close. Quarter after quarter the debate never ends, because the underlying data fragments across ERP, MES, SCADA, and CMMS systems (Fiix, eMaint, Infor) were never designed to talk to each