Level 5: Excellent
A Level 5 plant scores between 800 and 1000 on the Factory Excellence Index. Its routines run on real-time data that people trust, its frontline teams own their results, and good practice moves between lines and sites.
A 30-minute floor walk in a Level 5 plant
Shift change looks like Level 4 at first: a face-to-face handover at the line, in front of the board. The difference is that a manager is observing this one as part of a weekly sample. Any gap found, such as an issue left without an owner, is logged and treated as a problem to solve.
Boards follow the same layout on every line, so a visitor who has read one can read them all. Plan against actual, line status, open actions and skills cover are visible at a glance. The operator, the department manager and the plant manager look at the same data, each cut to their own scope.
The meeting cascade runs to a standard agenda with attendance tracked. What stands out is the return path: an issue the line escalated yesterday already has an answer written on the board today, and response times are reviewed every week.
When the bottleneck stops, an alert fires as soon as the stop passes its threshold, and the response is defined in advance. The operator assigns the reason within minutes. If the failure repeats, maintenance and production analyse the failure mode together, and a verified fix is copied to similar machines on other lines. The team running the line owns its measures and holds its own weekly improvement review, with support functions on call.
A Level 5 plant is not a plant without problems. It is a plant where problems surface within minutes and, once fixed, stay fixed.
How the six pillars typically look at Level 5
The table follows the top anchored answer on each question of the model. Your assessment report shows which answers are still below it.
| Pillar | Typical practice at this level |
|---|---|
| Performance visibility | Every stop and speed loss captured automatically, reasons assigned within minutes, unexplained stop time tracked as a data-quality measure. Threshold alerts with a defined response. One definition across the group's plants, mapped to a shared loss tree. Decisions on investment and staffing taken from the data. |
| Daily management and shift routines | A tiered cascade with a standard agenda and tracked attendance; answers come back down within one to two days. Handovers observed and gaps treated as problems. Standard boards checked in audits. Escalation triggered from real-time data. Leader standard work at every level, the plant manager included, used for coaching. |
| Loss and downtime problem-solving | Plant targets broken down into loss budgets per line and reviewed weekly. Problem-solving skills at every level, with analysis quality coached and recurrence tracked. Verified fixes update the standard and are copied to similar equipment. Operator care and planned maintenance integrated. Changeover standards with target times. |
| Improvement engine | Plant objectives deployed into line-level projects, reviewed monthly by leadership. Closure and on-time rates tracked, overdue actions escalated automatically. Standards reviewed on a cycle and copied between lines and sites. Gains reconciled with the budget, sustainment checked at 3 and 12 months. |
| People and frontline ownership | A live skills matrix with multi-skilling targets; certified operators train others. Teams own their line measures and run their own improvement loop. Team leaders coached against standard work, with a succession pipeline. Recognition designed with the teams. Frontline input shapes priorities. |
| Data and connectivity foundations | A standard connectivity architecture across all lines, with data requirements in every equipment purchase. Reference data harmonised across sites. Two-way integration with a documented data model. A data catalogue and self-service analysis. OT risk assessments and incident drills. |
What makes Level 5 plants slip
- A change at the top. A new plant manager who does not follow standard work signals that it is optional. The layers below notice within weeks.
- Growth that bypasses the standard. A new line, or equipment bought in a hurry without the connectivity and security clauses, becomes an island at a lower level inside a Level 5 plant.
- Audits that check the easy points. Layered audits that ask the same questions for years stop finding anything. Rotate the audit points and include sustainment of closed projects.
- Data trust eroding quietly. Cycle times changed outside the change process, or unexplained stop time drifting up, weaken the figures a little at a time. The data-quality measure exists to catch this early, if someone reads it.
- Priorities set without the frontline. When targets arrive from above and the boards stop showing what changed because of team input, ownership fades back into compliance.
How plants stay at Level 5 and spread practice between sites
There is no next level to move to. The work becomes holding the system steady through changes of people and equipment, and moving what works to the lines and sites that need it.
- Treat every regression as a problemKeep sustainment in the layered audit plan, and give any slip in a closed project's key measure its own root-cause analysis. The question is why the standard did not hold, not who let it slip.
- Keep the data honestHave the data-quality owner report unexplained and corrected time on a fixed rhythm. Route every reference-data change through the change process, and keep connectivity and security clauses in every equipment purchase, with an OT risk assessment and one incident drill a year.
- Align definitions across the groupShare the performance definition with the group's other plants, cross-check it on one line per site, and map every loss to a common loss tree. Without that, comparing sites compares arithmetic rather than practice.
- Move practice with people, not only documentsReview each standard on a set cycle and share one good practice per month between lines or sites. A standard sent by email arrives without the know-how behind it; send a team leader from the receiving line to spend a shift on the source line, and have them take the key measure back with the standard.
- Renew the people who run the systemKeep a named successor for every team-leader position, keep certifying operators as trainers, and coach every leader against their standard work, the plant manager included. Show on the boards which priorities changed because of frontline input.
What Level 5 means for recognition
Level 5 plants can request verification and be considered for Factory Excellence Recognition at Level 5. Evidence should show the system working across time and across lines: escalation response times, a sustainment audit and what it found, a standard copied from one line to another, a live skills matrix.
Verified status is dated and valid for 12 months, so staying recognised means verifying again. Verified plants can appear in the public register with their consent. Teams that own their line's results are natural candidates for the Frontline Team distinction, which opens to team nominations in Q2 2027.
Each league jury grants recognition twice a year. The first cycle runs in the France and Western Europe league and the Americas league, with a cut-off of 31 March 2027.
To be shown at Level 5, every pillar must be at Level 4 or above. A single pillar at Level 3 caps the overall level at 4, however high the total score.
Questions
If our self-assessment shows Level 5, are we recognised?
Not automatically. Recognition is granted by the league jury, twice a year, and only to verified plants. Request verification, prepare evidence and hold the 45-minute interview with two jurors. The league jury then reviews verified plants in its next cycle.
We run several plants. Is the group assessed as a whole?
No. The Index scores plants, not companies. Each site takes its own assessment and gets its own report, and verification applies to a plant. Group practice still shows in the answers, for example a performance definition aligned across the group's plants or reference data harmonised across sites.
What does the report give a plant already at Level 5?
The same content as for any plant: score, level, radar chart, pillar indices, profile pattern and the three biggest gaps with a 90-day move for each. At Level 5 the gaps are the answers still below the top anchor. Taking the assessment again once a year is a simple check that nothing has drifted.