The Six Big Losses in OEE: 2026 Manufacturing Data, Costs, and Benchmarks

What are the Six Big Losses in OEE?

The Six Big Losses are the most common causes of lost manufacturing productivity: equipment failure, setup and adjustments, idling and minor stops, reduced speed, process defects, and reduced yield. They affect the three components of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE): availability, performance, and quality. Identifying which losses consume the most production time helps manufacturers prioritize improvements that can increase throughput, reduce downtime, and improve OEE.

The Six Big Losses in manufacturing are:

• Equipment failure: Unplanned machine downtime that reduces availability
• Setup and adjustments: Production time lost during changeovers, setup, and machine adjustments
• Idling and minor stops: Brief interruptions that reduce performance without creating extended downtime
• Reduced speed: Production running below the equipment’s ideal cycle time
• Process defects: Defective products produced during normal operation
• Reduced yield: Scrap and defects generated during startup before stable production is reached

Equipment failure and setup losses reduce availability. Minor stops and reduced speed reduce performance. Process defects and reduced yield reduce quality.

Unplanned downtime, the first of the Six Big Losses, drains 11% of annual revenue from the world’s 500 largest companies, a $1.4 trillion bill Siemens measured across four industrial sectors. All six losses together hold the average plant near a 60% OEE score against a world-class benchmark of 85%. NIST priced the preventable share of that gap at $119.1 billion in US discrete manufacturing alone.

We analyzed the six losses one at a time, drawing on surveys and case studies, which let us rank each loss by its measured share. Each section below quantifies one loss group using the strongest available published measure, such as cost, production time lost, share of total losses, or impact on OEE.

Key Takeaways

• Reduced speed tops the loss ranking on more production lines than any other category, peaking at 58.1% of all losses on a six-machine plastics operation.
• Changeover accounts for 37% of OEE decline, more than any other single cause.
• Reactive-heavy plants lose 13.0% of planned production time to downtime. Predictive-heavy plants lose 4.0%.
• Unplanned downtime consumes 11% of revenue at the world’s 500 largest companies, a figure Siemens put at $1.4 trillion.

How Godlan Analyzed the Six Big Losses

Godlan reviewed published manufacturing studies, industry research, and production case studies measuring the Six Big Losses across discrete and process manufacturing environments. Because studies report manufacturing losses differently, we compared each loss using the strongest published measure available, such as the percentage of total losses, production time lost, OEE impact, defect rates, or financial cost. Results should be interpreted as industry benchmarks rather than expected results for an individual facility.

What Each of the Six Big Losses Costs

Every production loss is sorted into six categories that roll up into the three OEE factors. Each one demands a different fix. Our analysis below maps each loss to its OEE factor, along with the hardest verified number behind it.

Key Insights:

• Performance losses outranked availability losses on four of the five lines measured below, which upends the assumption that breakdowns dominate OEE.
• Operators clear minor stops in under two minutes. Plants without cycle-level monitoring never record them.