Benchmarks are only useful if they're honest. Instead of generic industry averages, we graded 62 lines against their own portfolio's steady-state and peak-stress cohorts. The result is a simple three-band diagnostic that tells you, at a glance, whether a line is losing capacity to fragmentation.
Most operational benchmarks compare a line to a generic industry figure it has nothing in common with. That tells you almost nothing actionable. So instead of borrowing an average, we built the bands from the portfolio's own behaviour, 30 validated monthly data points across 12 operations, and let the data draw its own lines.
Two cohorts defined the scale. A steady-state group, running calmly month after month, settled at a 14.28% interruption-ratio baseline. A peak-stress group, measured through its hardest stretch, defined a 19.82% upper control limit. Between and around those two numbers sit three tiers:
Knowing a line's tier answers the first question worth asking: is this line losing capacity to fragmentation, or is it genuinely constrained somewhere else? A Volatile tier says the losses are in the pulse, and no amount of machine speed will fix them.
That makes the tier a triage tool. Volatile lines get attention on their interruption causes first, because that's where the recoverable capacity is. Optimised lines can be pushed on other levers without wasting effort chasing stops that aren't the problem. Critical lines get watched so they don't slide.
An interruption ratio can be distorted by the line's stop threshold, so a line can look Optimised while hiding a chronic problem. Always confirm the tier against the line's Threshold Exposure Index before acting on it.
The three tiers are one of the core frameworks in the Interruption Whitepaper.
It's the share of a line's downtime made up of high-frequency interruptions (micro-stops), as opposed to longer coded breakdowns. It isolates process fragmentation from mechanical failure.
Generic averages compare a line to operations it has nothing in common with. These bands are derived from 30 validated monthly data points across the studied portfolio, a steady-state cohort setting the 14.28% baseline and a peak-stress cohort setting the 19.82% upper control limit, so the comparison is grounded in real, comparable operations.
Optimised lines have stable flow and clear reporting. Critical lines are drifting and need watching. Volatile lines are where performance collapses, from around 81% in the optimised tier to under 69% in the volatile tier, and where the speed tax is highest.