Top 100 Companies Recognized for Outperforming Peers in Industrial Productivity Growth

LNS Research has released its study announcing the World’s Most Productive Companies™ for 2025. The newly published report, designed as a COO playbook, outlines the methodology behind LNS Research’s significant, annual productivity study. The report recognizes the World’s Most Productive Companies as the Top 100 publicly traded companies worldwide, achieving the strongest industrial productivity growth since 2019.

The analysis, based on LNS Research’s Industrial Productivity Index™, represents the most comprehensive quantitative study of productivity performance across 10 industries and 90+ peer groups.

According to the report, results reveal a stark divide. The Top 100 companies have grown productivity by 13.9% and increased operating margins by 18.5 points more than others over the past five years.

“The essential economy is at an inflection point,” said Matthew Littlefield, President of LNS Research. “Our data shows a global productivity crisis. Industrial productivity has declined by over 30% over the past two decades, driven by dramatic shifts in workforce demographics, complexity, and risk. Yet over the past five years, these 100 companies have proven that we can bend the curve in the opposite direction, where world-class productivity growth is not only possible, but also the single most powerful lever for profitable growth, driving free cash flow and enterprise value.”

Within the Top 100, 30 elite organizations known as the Productivity Pathfinders™ stand out for achieving the most differentiated productivity growth over the last five years.

“The Productivity Pathfinders™ are rewriting the playbook for manufacturing success,” Littlefield added. “They’ve demonstrated that it is possible to outperform by operating differently across the end-to-end value chain—building trust, driving innovation, and investing where technology and people create measurable value.”

According to LNS Research’s analysis, the World’s Most Productive Companies excel through key differentiators; they:

• Align strategy, operating models, transformation, and supply networks as one integrated system.
• Invest in people and decision intelligence as deliberately as capital and automation.
• Simplify architectures so innovation scales beyond pilots.
• Run disciplined, enterprise operating models grounded in proven principles.
• Share information across the value chain to reduce variance and increase speed.
• Deploy AI within guardrails that protect stability, trust, and performance.
• Treat productivity as the primary driver of profitable growth.

The World’s Most Productive Companies™ were revealed via LinkedIn Live and formally recognized at The Industrial Transformation Event in late 2025.

About LNS Research

LNS Research helps global manufacturers achieve world-class performance through data-driven insights, executive advisory, and peer collaboration. The firm’s research connects industrial leaders to the strategies, technologies, and operating models that drive measurable productivity and competitive advantage.

LNS Research is the creator of the World’s Most Productive Companies™ and the Industrial Productivity Index™—the benchmark for industrial performance worldwide. Through The COO Council, an exclusive executive community, executive events, and its leading research and advisory services for members, LNS Research empowers operations leaders to navigate disruption and deliver sustainable results.

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