92% adherence—should we punish production or planning?
Split the 800 units by reason code. Material and tooling are joint ownership; only pure capacity shortfall is operations alone.
ZBI Business Control Library
Schedule Adherence
Schedule Adherence: plain-English definition, formula, worked example, how to interpret the result, peer-based benchmark guidance, common mistakes, and management actions in the ZBI Business Control Library.
What is Schedule Adherence?
Schedule adherence compares what the shop floor actually produced against the quantity on the frozen weekly plan—same period, same units. It shows whether planning releases were executed, not whether customers received on time. IndustriServis d.o.o. in Rijeka planned 10,000 units and finished 9,200—adherence 92%, meaning 800 planned units never landed when the schedule said they would.
Why Schedule Adherence matters
At 92% adherence, 800 planned units did not arrive when kitting and downstream assembly expected them—expedite freight replaces rhythm and internal milestones slip. Chronic adherence below plan teaches sales not to trust portal dates you publish. High adherence with rising WIP can still mean building the wrong sequence—pair with on-time delivery. When planners cut planned volume 10% mid-week without telling commercial, adherence jumps but service does not improve. Labour schedules and supplier ASNs assume the released plan is real; weak adherence breaks that promise to your own floor.
Formula and variables
Schedule Adherence % = Actual Production per Schedule ÷ Planned Production × 100
Actual production per schedule — good units completed against the official plan in the period.
Planned production — released schedule quantity for the same horizon and unit.
Excel: =IFERROR(B2/B3*100,0)
Real business example
IndustriServis d.o.o., a maintenance supplies manufacturer in Rijeka, closes Week 19: planned production 10,000 units on the CNC cell per the frozen weekly plan; actual good output against that plan 9,200 units. Schedule adherence = 9,200 ÷ 10,000 × 100 = 92%. Week 18 was 96%—the gap is 300 units lost to an unplanned tool breakage and 500 units deferred when inbound steel arrived two days late. Planning freezes Week 20 at 9,500 units until material coverage is confirmed.
How to interpret the result
Adherence measures execution against the plan you actually released.
- Freeze the plan baseline—moving goalposts mid-week inflates adherence without improving service.
- Low adherence with low utilization points to material or priority chaos; low adherence with high utilization points to overload.
- Segment by cell: plant adherence can hide one constraint dragging the number.
- Compare adherence to on-time delivery—large gaps mean right quantity, wrong sequence or dates.
Benchmark context
Many discrete manufacturers target 92–98% adherence on frozen weekly plans; custom job shops run lower when engineering changes are daily. Benchmark against your own four-week rolling average and against the adherence assumed in MRP infinite-capacity flags—not a generic 100%. Peers with high mix accept 88–92% if on-time delivery still clears 95% on A-class orders—know which trade-off you chose.
Red flags
- Adherence below 85% for three weeks—backlog replanning every Monday; overtime and customer penalties accumulate.
- Adherence above 98% with stockouts on other SKUs—plan was sandbagged or wrong SKUs were built.
- Adherence volatile ±15 points week to week—unstable plan or unreliable material; trust in dates collapses.
- Actual exceeds plan every week—plans are too soft; capacity and procurement are misaligned.
- Adherence recovers only when planned volume is cut—commercial still expects original quantities.
Common mistakes
- Rewriting the plan mid-period and comparing actuals to the revised plan without logging the change.
- Counting partial assemblies that downstream cannot use toward adherence.
- Measuring adherence in euros while planning in units—mix shift distorts the percent.
- Excluding planned maintenance windows then blaming operations for 'missing' fake volume.
- Publishing adherence plant-wide while only one cell determines customer shipment.
What should management do next?
- Freeze weekly plan by Thursday noon; changes after freeze require commercial sign-off.
- Review adherence vs material availability in the same daily meeting—not Friday after the week ends.
- Log every plan change with reason code: customer pull-in, engineering, material, capacity.
- Set adherence threshold triggers that release replanning rules before the backlog exceeds five days.
- Display adherence on the constraint cell board with top loss reason from the current week.
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FAQ
Customer pull-ins wreck our plan every week—does adherence still matter?
Yes—track 'unplanned change' percent separately. Chronic pull-ins mean commercial and planning need a different freeze policy.
Adherence is strong but customers still complain—what are we missing?
Check on-time delivery and correct SKU mix—you may hit volume on the wrong orders.
How frozen must the plan be for a fair adherence number?
Define policy: e.g. frozen after Thursday 12:00 for the following week. Document exceptions.
ERP backflush timing makes Friday actuals look low—how do we fix reporting?
Align adherence cut-off with inventory transaction rules or measure at shift complete with barcodes.
Summary
Schedule adherence compares actual output to the released plan. Freeze the baseline, classify misses honestly, and pair with on-time delivery so quantity and date both hold.
Reviewed by ZBI Business Control Library · Last updated 2026-06-15