Learn / Statistics
Lean manufacturing statistics (2026)
58 statistics on unplanned downtime, maintenance, quality, safety, the frontline workforce, engagement and digital manufacturing. Every figure links to the report or government table it comes from and shows the year it was published.
26 sources · Last reviewed · Published by LeanSuite
Key takeaways
- Unplanned downtime costs the world's 500 largest companies almost $1.4 trillion a year, 11% of revenue (Siemens, 2024). See the figure
- Plants that rely most on reactive maintenance have 3.3 times more downtime and 16 times more defects (NIST, 2020). See the figure
- Manufacturing records 2.7 injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers, against 2.3 for all private industry (BLS, 2024 data). See the figure
- 1.9 million of the 3.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs needed by 2033 could go unfilled (Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, 2024). See the figure
- Only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, and highly engaged units have 63% fewer safety incidents (Gallup, 2026 and 2024). See the figure
- 59% of manufacturers use smart manufacturing technology in operations, but only 43% of the data they collect is used effectively (Rockwell Automation, 2026). See the figure
- U.S. manufacturing productivity has grown just 0.5% a year since late 2019 (BLS, 2026). See the figure
Unplanned downtime
Unplanned downtime is the most expensive routine failure in manufacturing. Siemens puts the bill for the world's 500 largest companies at almost $1.4 trillion a year, 11% of their revenue, and an hour at a large car plant now costs about $2.3 million. Plants have cut the number of stoppages since 2019, but each one takes longer to recover from, so the time between a machine stopping and someone fixing it matters more than ever.
$1.4 trillion
2024The world's 500 largest companies lose almost $1.4 trillion a year to unplanned downtime, equal to 11% of their revenues.
Siemens estimate for the Fortune Global 500, extrapolated from 181 online interviews with maintenance, engineering and IT staff at large industrial plants (April 2019 to March 2023).
$2.3 million
2024An hour of unplanned downtime at a large automotive plant costs about $2.3 million, twice what it cost in 2019.
Highest of the four sectors Siemens surveyed (automotive, fast-moving consumer goods, heavy industry, oil and gas).
$36,000
2024Even in fast-moving consumer goods, the lowest-cost sector in the Siemens survey, a lost hour of production costs about $36,000.
Siemens notes FMCG hourly costs have stayed relatively stable since 2019.
27 hours
2024A large plant loses an average of 27 hours a month to unplanned downtime, down from 39 hours in 2019 but still more than a full day of production.
Average across the large plants in the Siemens survey (326 hours a year).
25 a month
2024Plants average 25 unplanned downtime incidents a month, 41% fewer than five years earlier (42 a month in 2019).
Per facility, large plants in the Siemens survey.
81 minutes
2024Getting production running again after a stoppage now takes 81 minutes on average, up from 49 minutes five years earlier.
Siemens links the slower recovery to the loss of skilled maintenance staff, harder-to-source spare parts and harder-to-fix remaining faults.
$125,000
2023The typical industrial business puts the cost of one hour of unplanned downtime at close to $125,000 (median).
ABB Value of Reliability survey of 3,215 plant maintenance decision-makers across 11 industrial sectors, run by Sapio Research in July 2023. Self-reported figures, not accounting records.
Over 2 in 3
2023More than two-thirds of industrial businesses have an unplanned outage at least once a month.
Same ABB survey of 3,215 plant maintenance decision-makers (July 2023).
Glossary: Unplanned downtime, OEE, Six big losses, Micro-stops
Go deeper: How to reduce manufacturing downtime, Downtime cost calculator
In LeanSuite: Daily Issue Management gives frontline teams one place to flag, track and resolve shop floor issues as they happen.
Maintenance strategy
Most plants still fix machines after they break. NIST found reactive work is the largest share of maintenance at U.S. discrete manufacturers, and the plants that rely on it most have 3.3 times the downtime of those that rely on it least. Preventable maintenance problems cost those manufacturers $119.1 billion in 2016, about twice what they spent on maintenance itself.
3.3×
2020Plants in the top quarter for reliance on reactive maintenance had 3.3 times more downtime than plants in the bottom quarter.
NIST comparison of the top 25% and bottom 25% of establishments by reliance on reactive maintenance.
$119.1 billion
2020Preventable maintenance problems cost U.S. discrete manufacturers $119.1 billion in 2016, against $57.3 billion spent on machinery maintenance.
2016 values. NIST splits the losses into $18.1 billion from downtime, $0.8 billion from defects and $100.2 billion in lost sales from delays and defects.
87%
2020Among plants that rely mainly on planned maintenance, predictive maintenance was associated with an 87% lower defect rate and 15% less downtime.
NIST comparison within establishments that primarily use preventive and predictive maintenance.
21%
202321% of industrial businesses still rely on run-to-fail maintenance.
ABB Value of Reliability survey of 3,215 plant maintenance decision-makers (July 2023).
2×
2024Almost half of the large manufacturers Siemens surveyed now have a dedicated predictive maintenance team, twice the share in 2019.
Large plants in automotive, FMCG, heavy industry and oil and gas (April 2019 to March 2023).
87%
202487% of major manufacturers already collect data that makes predictive maintenance possible, yet almost three-quarters still rely on factory historians.
Siemens survey of large plants; Siemens describes historians as legacy technology for predictive maintenance.
Glossary: Reactive maintenance, Preventive maintenance, Predictive maintenance, TPM, Autonomous maintenance
Go deeper: Proactive vs reactive maintenance, Preventive vs predictive maintenance
In LeanSuite: Autonomous Maintenance puts visual CILR checklists in operators' hands so small abnormalities are caught before they cause downtime.
Quality and the cost of poor quality
Most organizations cannot say what poor quality costs them: only 31% of respondents to ASQE's 2025 research feel they fully understand it. The evidence that does exist points to maintenance and people as big levers. NIST links heavy reliance on reactive maintenance with 16 times more defects, and Gallup finds highly engaged work units have 32% fewer defects. Quality is also where manufacturers most want to apply AI.
31%
2025Only 31% of respondents feel they fully understand how quality costs affect their organization's financial performance.
From ASQE's 2025 Insights on Excellence Cost of Quality Report, as published by ASQ.
16×
2020Plants that rely most on reactive maintenance had 16 times more defects than those that rely on it least.
NIST comparison of the top and bottom 25% of U.S. discrete manufacturing establishments by reliance on reactive maintenance.
32%
2024Work units in the top quarter for employee engagement have 32% fewer quality defects than bottom-quarter units.
Median difference across Gallup's meta-analysis of 183,806 business and work units (3.35 million employees) in 53 industries.
50%
2025Quality control was manufacturers' top AI use case for the second year running, with 50% planning to apply AI or machine learning to product quality in 2025.
Rockwell Automation survey of 1,560 manufacturers in 17 countries, conducted March 2025.
33.3%
202633.3% of manufacturers in MLC's 2026 survey have implemented generative AI for root cause analysis and diagnostics, and 30% for quality improvement.
Manufacturing Leadership Council Industrial AI survey; respondents could select several areas.
Glossary: Cost of poor quality (COPQ), PAF model, First pass yield, Root cause analysis
Go deeper: How to calculate and reduce COPQ, Cost of poor quality calculator
In LeanSuite: LeanSuite's Quality Matrix pulls defect data together, puts a dollar cost on each defect and shows engineering what to fix first.
Safety
Manufacturing is still more dangerous than the average U.S. workplace. In 2024 it recorded 2.7 injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers against 2.3 for all private industry, 332,600 cases in total, and 353 deaths. Lockout/tagout, forklifts and machine guarding, all everyday plant hazards, are among OSHA's ten most-cited standards.
2.7
2026Manufacturing recorded 2.7 nonfatal injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers in 2024, against 2.3 across all private industry.
BLS Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, total recordable case rate, 2024.
1.7
20261.7 cases per 100 manufacturing workers were serious enough to cause days away from work, job restriction or transfer in 2024, against 1.4 across private industry.
BLS DART rate (days away, restricted or transferred), 2024.
332,600
2026U.S. manufacturers reported 332,600 recordable injury and illness cases in 2024, about 13% of all private-industry cases.
BLS counts: 332.6 thousand in manufacturing out of 2,488.4 thousand in private industry (share calculated by LeanSuite).
353
2026353 manufacturing workers died from work injuries in 2024. Contact with objects and equipment was the most common event, with 104 deaths.
BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2024.
104 minutes
2026Across all U.S. industries, a worker died from a work-related injury every 104 minutes in 2024, 5,070 deaths in total.
BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. The fatal injury rate was 3.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers.
#4
2025Lockout/tagout (control of hazardous energy) was OSHA's 4th most-cited standard in fiscal 2025. Powered industrial trucks ranked 8th and machine guarding 10th.
OSHA federal inspections, October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025.
63%
2024Work units in the top quarter for employee engagement have 63% fewer safety incidents than bottom-quarter units.
Median difference in Gallup's meta-analysis of 183,806 business and work units.
Glossary: Lockout/tagout, Near miss, Behavior-based safety
Go deeper: Building a proactive safety culture, How near-miss reporting prevents incidents
In LeanSuite: Behavior-Based Safety turns shop-floor safety walks into trackable observations, positive reinforcement and micro-training.
Frontline workforce and skills
The labor gap is structural, not cyclical. Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute project that U.S. manufacturing could need 3.8 million more workers by 2033 and that 1.9 million of those jobs could go unfilled. The fastest-growing need is for technicians, and people who can see a path to new skills are far less likely to leave, which makes training and cross-training a retention tool as much as a capability one.
3.8 million
2024U.S. manufacturing could need as many as 3.8 million additional employees between 2024 and 2033.
Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute projection, based on a survey of U.S. manufacturers, executive interviews and labor supply and demand data.
1.9 million
2024About half of those jobs, 1.9 million, could go unfilled if manufacturers cannot close the skills and applicant gaps.
Same Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute study.
580,000
2026U.S. manufacturing had 580,000 job openings in July 2026, a job openings rate of 4.4%.
BLS JOLTS, seasonally adjusted; the July 2026 figure is preliminary and may be revised.
6×
2026Manufacturing technician employment could grow six times faster than production jobs between 2025 and 2030, with 2.3 million openings across manufacturing and adjacent-industry technician roles.
Deloitte analysis for The Manufacturing Institute; openings include growth and replacement of retirements and other exits.
43.9
2026The median age of employed U.S. manufacturing workers was 43.9 in 2025, against 42.1 for all industries.
BLS Current Population Survey, 2025 annual averages.
47.0%
202647.0% of manufacturers named attracting and retaining a quality workforce as one of their biggest challenges in Q2 2026, behind raw material costs (83.1%) and trade uncertainty (71.8%).
NAM survey of 215 manufacturers, May 12-28, 2026; respondents could pick several challenges. In Q1 2024, 65% called talent their primary challenge.
2.7×
2024Employees are 2.7 times less likely to leave in the next 12 months if they feel they can gain the skills that will matter in future.
Deloitte research cited in the Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute 2024 talent study.
48%
202548% of large manufacturers report moderate to significant challenges filling production and operations roles.
Deloitte survey of 600 U.S. manufacturing executives at companies with at least $500 million revenue, August to September 2024.
Glossary: Skills matrix, Cross-training, TWI Job Instruction
Go deeper: Closing plant-wide skill gaps in 90 days, The TWI Job Instruction method
In LeanSuite: Competency Management shows your team's competencies on one live matrix so you can close gaps and build a cross-trained workforce.
Employee engagement and frontline ideas
Only one in five employees worldwide is engaged at work, and the gap between engaged and disengaged teams shows up on the shop floor: fewer accidents, fewer defects, less absence and more output. In manufacturing, frontline workers feel far less involved in decisions and problem solving than their leaders do. Toyota's suggestion system shows how far the opposite can go.
20%
2026Only 20% of employees worldwide were engaged at work in 2025, the lowest level since 2020.
Gallup survey of 263,810 people in more than 140 countries and territories, January to December 2025.
$10 trillion
2026Gallup estimates low engagement cost the world economy about $10 trillion in lost productivity in 2025, 9% of global GDP.
Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026.
22%
2026Manager engagement fell five points in one year, from 27% in 2024 to 22% in 2025.
Gallup attributes most of the recent fall in global engagement to managers.
31%
202631% of U.S. employees were engaged at work in 2025, unchanged from 2024 and down from 36% in 2020.
Gallup quarterly web surveys of 78,945 U.S. employees during 2025.
14%
2024Work units in the top quarter for engagement are 14% more productive on production measures and 23% more profitable than bottom-quarter units.
Median differences in Gallup's meta-analysis of 183,806 business and work units.
78%
2024Top-quarter engagement units have 78% less absenteeism than bottom-quarter units.
Median difference in Gallup's meta-analysis of 183,806 business and work units.
67%
202067% of frontline manufacturing workers said they have enough chance to take part in decision making, problem solving and goal setting, against 96% of senior leaders.
Survey of 578 employees at five manufacturers, August to October 2020. Not a representative sample of the industry.
250,000+
1973Historical benchmark: in 1973 Toyota expected more than 250,000 improvement suggestions from its 43,000 employees, with more than 70% adopted.
Toyota's Creative Idea Suggestion System, started in 1951 with 789 ideas in its first year.
Glossary: Kaizen teian, Kaizen, Quality circle, Gemba walk
Go deeper: Kaizen teian: individual improvement suggestions, Kaizen: a complete guide
In LeanSuite: Idea Management collects ideas from frontline teams in one place and turns the best ones into improvement projects.
Digital manufacturing and AI
Manufacturers have moved from asking whether to digitize to making it pay. Rockwell finds 90% call digital transformation essential and 59% already use smart manufacturing technology in operations, and Deloitte's respondents report 10-20% more output from it. The constraint is execution and people: only 43% of collected data is used effectively, most rate their AI maturity as low, and four in ten give frontline workers no AI training.
90%
202690% of manufacturers say digital transformation is now essential to staying competitive.
Rockwell Automation survey of 1,560 manufacturers in 17 countries, conducted by Sapio Research.
59%
202659% of manufacturers actively use smart manufacturing technology to support operations; only 18% are still in pilot mode.
Rockwell Automation 2026 State of Smart Manufacturing report.
43%
2026Only 43% of the data manufacturers collect is being used effectively.
Rockwell Automation 2026 State of Smart Manufacturing report.
34%
2026About a third of operations (34%) are AI-augmented today, and manufacturers expect more than half to be AI-supported by 2030.
Rockwell Automation 2026 State of Smart Manufacturing report.
10-20%
2025Manufacturers using smart manufacturing report average gains of 10-20% in production output, 7-20% in employee productivity and 10-15% in unlocked capacity.
Self-reported by 600 U.S. manufacturing executives at companies with at least $500 million revenue (Deloitte, August to September 2024).
92%
202592% of manufacturers surveyed believe smart manufacturing will be the main driver of competitiveness over the next three years.
Deloitte 2025 Smart Manufacturing and Operations Survey (600 executives).
78%
202578% of large manufacturers put more than 20% of their overall improvement budget into smart manufacturing initiatives.
Deloitte 2025 Smart Manufacturing and Operations Survey (600 executives).
70.9%
202670.9% of manufacturers surveyed use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Copilot in manufacturing operations, up from 46% in 2024.
Manufacturing Leadership Council Industrial AI survey, published April 2026.
Over 75%
2026More than three-quarters of manufacturers rate the maturity of AI in their operations below 5 on a 10-point scale.
Manufacturing Leadership Council Industrial AI survey, published April 2026.
41.4%
202641.4% of manufacturers give frontline workers no AI-related training.
NAM survey of 215 manufacturers, May 12-28, 2026 (a further 7.6% were uncertain).
54%
202654% of manufacturing leaders have low or very low confidence that their frontline leaders are ready to lead AI-driven change.
PwC and Manufacturing Institute survey of over 100 manufacturing leaders, third quarter of 2025.
Glossary: Digital work instructions, Visual management, Leading and lagging indicators
Go deeper: Why you should digitize abnormality reporting, The benefits of digital work instructions
In LeanSuite: KPI Dashboards turn shop floor data into dashboards anyone from operators to the plant manager can read and act on.
Productivity and management practices
U.S. manufacturing productivity has barely grown this business cycle: 0.5% a year from late 2019 to mid-2026. The biggest differences between plants are not only technology. Census data on 32,000 U.S. plants shows structured management practices (targets, monitoring and incentives) explain about a fifth of the productivity gap between plants, as much as R&D and twice as much as IT, and 40% of the variation sits between plants of the same company.
0.5%
2026U.S. manufacturing labor productivity has grown at an annual rate of just 0.5% from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2026.
BLS: output grew at 0.2% a year while hours worked fell at 0.3% a year over the same period.
2.4%
2026Manufacturing labor productivity rose at a 2.4% annual rate in the second quarter of 2026, and 1.1% on a year earlier.
BLS revised estimate, released September 3, 2026.
About 1/5
2017Differences in structured management practices account for about a fifth of the spread in productivity between U.S. manufacturing plants, as much as R&D and twice as much as IT.
Census Bureau Management and Organizational Practices Survey of 32,000 U.S. manufacturing plants, analyzed by Bloom and co-authors.
40%
201740% of the variation in management practices is between plants belonging to the same company.
Same Census and NBER study of 32,000 U.S. manufacturing plants.
Glossary: Standard work, Yokoten, Operational excellence, Lean manufacturing
Go deeper: Operational excellence in manufacturing, Yokoten: sharing what works across sites
In LeanSuite: Continuous Improvement Software tracks every improvement project, from a small kaizen event to a full DMAIC project, through to results.
How we chose these statistics
- Every figure comes from the publisher's own page, report or government table, which we read in full. Where a number is widely repeated but we could not find it at the original source, we left it out. Two examples: the $260,000-an-hour downtime cost often attributed to Siemens' 2024 report does not appear in it, and ASQ's current cost of quality page does not give the often-quoted rule that quality costs 15-20% of sales.
- We prefer figures published from 2022 to 2026. A few older ones stay because no newer primary source measures the same thing (NIST's maintenance survey, 2020; the Census management study, 2017; the Manufacturing Institute retention survey, 2020; Toyota's 1973 suggestion figures). Each shows its year.
- Figures are shown as the source gives them, without rounding. Sentences are our paraphrase. The one figure we calculated, manufacturing's share of private-industry injury cases, says so.
- Surveys differ in who they ask. Industry surveys (Siemens, ABB, Rockwell Automation, Deloitte, NAM, the Manufacturing Leadership Council) are self-reported and cover different countries and company sizes, so compare figures from different sources with care.
- Last reviewed . Spotted an error or a newer edition? Tell us.
To cite this page: LeanSuite, “Lean manufacturing statistics (2026)”, www.theleansuite.com/learn/lean-manufacturing-statistics, reviewed September 26, 2026. Where you can, cite the original source linked under each figure.
Sources
- Siemens, The True Cost of Downtime 2024 (Senseye Predictive Maintenance) (2024)
- ABB, ABB survey reveals unplanned downtime costs $125,000 per hour (Value of Reliability survey) (2023-10-11)
- NIST, Economics of Manufacturing Machinery Maintenance: A Survey and Analysis of U.S. Costs and Benefits (NIST AMS 100-34) (2020)
- ASQ, What is Cost of Quality (COQ)? (citing the 2025 ASQE Insights on Excellence Cost of Quality Report) (2025)
- Gallup, The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes: Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition (2024)
- Rockwell Automation, Ninety-Five Percent of Manufacturers Are Investing in AI (10th annual State of Smart Manufacturing report) (2025-06-03)
- Manufacturing Leadership Council (NAM), Survey: GenAI Adoption Surges In Manufacturing (2026-04-01)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 1. Incidence rates of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses by industry and case types, 2024 (2026)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 2. Numbers of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses by industry and case types, 2024 (2026)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A-1. Fatal occupational injuries by industry and event or exposure, all United States, 2024 (2026)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries Summary, 2024 (2026-02-19)
- OSHA, Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards, fiscal year 2025 (2025)
- The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte, Manufacturers Need as Many as 3.8 Million New Employees by 2033 (2024-04-03)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, Table 1: Job openings levels and rates by industry (July 2026, preliminary) (2026)
- The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte, Deloitte and MI Study Shows Potential for AI to Accelerate Manufacturing Skills Training (2026-09-10)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Table 18b: Employed persons by detailed industry and age (2025 annual averages) (2026)
- National Association of Manufacturers, NAM Manufacturers' Outlook Survey, Second Quarter 2026 (2026-06-10)
- Deloitte, 2025 Smart Manufacturing and Operations Survey (2025-05-01)
- Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (2026)
- Gallup, U.S. Employee Engagement Declines From 2020 Peak (2026-01-27)
- The Manufacturing Institute and American Psychological Association, Manufacturing Engagement and Retention Study (2020 survey)
- Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Company Suggestion Program Vigorously Supported by Employees (1973-10-22)
- Rockwell Automation, 90% of Manufacturers Say Digital Transformation Is Now Essential (2026 State of Smart Manufacturing report) (2026-05-19)
- PwC and The Manufacturing Institute, New Study from PwC, MI Finds Frontline Leaders Play a Key Role in Manufacturing AI Adoption (2026-04-03)
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2026, Revised (2026-09-03)
- NBER (with the U.S. Census Bureau), What Drives Differences in Management? (Working Paper 23300, Bloom et al.) (2017)
FAQ
Lean manufacturing statistics: common questions
Want to see where your plant stands?
Put your own numbers into our free calculators, or bring the problem you are working on and we will show you how LeanSuite handles it.