Apparel Plants Score 0.366 on Census’s Management Scale. Primary Metal Plants Score 0.642.

Census scored how structured management is inside U.S. manufacturing plants. Scores differ far more between trades than between states.

Trade by trade, the spread is wide

Census builds the score from sixteen of the survey’s questions: how a plant handles production problems, how many performance measures it tracks and who reviews them, how it sets targets, and how it promotes, rewards and moves people. Each answer is placed on a 0 to 1 scale and the sixteen are averaged. Across every plant in the survey the result is 0.532. Split by trade, it spreads a long way. Primary metals (0.642), paper and transportation equipment (both 0.628), plastics and rubber (0.624) and chemicals (0.617) lead a group of nine trades that sit clearly above the all-plant score. Apparel (0.366), leather (0.418), printing (0.430) and textile products (0.433) lead the eight that sit clearly below it. The two groups do not overlap: every trade in the upper group clears every trade in the lower one on the margins of error.

Every trade in the upper group clears every trade in the lower one. By state, 39 of 50 are level with the nation.

Where the plant sits matters far less

The same score by state tells a quieter story. Of 50 states, 39 are level with the nation on their margins of error; their scores run from 0.478 to 0.562. Seven sit above it — Alabama and New Hampshire (both 0.577), Arizona and Mississippi (both 0.572), South Carolina (0.571), North Carolina (0.563) and Wisconsin (0.557). Four sit below — California (0.487), New York (0.477), New Jersey (0.470) and Rhode Island (0.426), whose estimate is the least precise of the four at plus or minus 0.088. By region, the South (0.546) and the Midwest (0.542) are level with each other and both sit above the West (0.510) and the Northeast (0.506). Census does not publish the state score by trade, so a state’s position may partly reflect which trades its plants are in.

One of the sixteen questions, up close

One question in the score asks what happened the last time a production problem arose. 55.5% of plants gave the most structured answer: they fixed it, acted so it would not happen again, and had a continuous-improvement process to anticipate problems like it. Another 36.9% fixed it and acted to stop a repeat, without the ongoing process. 5.8% fixed it and took no further action, and 1.8% took no action at all. Census publishes this answer nationally only, not by trade or state.

What to take from this if you are building a company

Benchmark against your own trade, not against an average. A 0.50 means something different in printing than it does in chemicals, and the gap between trades here is much wider than the gap between most states. The score is a checklist in disguise: how you handle a problem after the fix, how many numbers you track and who looks at them, whether targets exist, and what happens when someone is promoted or falls short. Pick the question where your own answer is the least structured and settle it before the company grows into it. If you are the one carrying every one of those answers in your head, that is the burden to hand off first.

Four limits worth holding. MOPS covers manufacturing plants only, and its frame is multi-plant companies plus large single-plant companies, so small single-plant shops are outside it. The figures are estimates from a sample and are treated as different only when the gap clears both margins of error. The trade table does not hold plant size fixed: Census’s size table shows the score rises with headcount, so part of a trade’s position may reflect how big its plants are, and Census does not publish trade by size. And the survey records practice, not reasons.

Published by The Lonely Entrepreneur — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. lonelyentrepreneur.com

This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.