It’s usually the opposite in most industries no? The larger scale your operations the fancier your equipment and controls are. I’m not familiar at all with blending but just seemed like the opposite you see with things like alcohol, cosmetics, pharma, etc.
In some industries, yes, but not this one. The major brands are focused on speed and cost of production. Wide tolerances are accepted to allow for faster and cheaper production, and outlier specs are masked by blending huge batches at a time. This is unlike alcohol, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
With alcohol, you can taste variances between batches so careful attention is given to ensuring the formula is consistent batch to batch so people remain loyal to their brand. Plus, it only gets better with age in an oak barrel. Cosmetics, same thing. Variances in quality and specifications is not good when seeking foundations that match one's skin complexion. It has to be very consistent. Pharmaceuticals... could you imagine if a 10 mg pill could vary between 8 and 13 mg? It has to be precise.
With engine oil, nobody is going to notice the difference if an oil varies by 2-3 cSt. You can't smell or taste the difference, other's won't recognize the difference for you, and API gives them a standard that's way down in the toilet so there's no incentive to be precise. When it comes to alcohol and cosmetics, people are much more brand loyal. They find what they like, what suits them best, and stick to it. With engine oil, the vast majority of the public rolls through Walmart lube center, Jiffy Lube, or any other quick lube place or dealership and couldn't tell you what brand they have in their engine. The ones who do shop the shelf usually can't tell you the difference between brands and just shop by price. Most don't even know what API is or that it even exists. It's why Rotella, Super Tech, and Kirkland are so popular. The major brands know this, very well, and thus speed and cost of production takes center stage to be competitive with the other brands on the shelf price wise.
They often don't take the time to precisely measure each and every component of each batch as that takes time. They blend by volume, rather than weight, because it's much faster, and the variances are washed out over huge batches. They may blend 30,000 gallons of 0W-20 and then have 5W-30 lined up right after it, and some residual 4 cSt base oil from the 20 grade is left in the lines. You may have the first several gallons of the 5W-30 be in 20 grade range because the transition isn't a clear cut between them. That's when you get a result like what's seen in the OP with a KV100 that's out of range and elements below minimums. Stopping production to properly flush the system, or running dedicated tanks, is cost prohibitive.
A lot of what makes the smaller specialty oil brands better is their attention to the fine details. At HPL, for example, everything is blended by weight down to fractions of an ounce on an 8,000 gallon tank. Their scales are so precise that even a breeze off the ceiling fan will throw off the reading. Their blending equipment has less variance than the $1.5 million worth of lab equipment, it's that precise. They have dedicated tanks to specific blends so there's not cross interference. Additives are slowly and carefully introduced one at a time into the base oils, in cycling pumps, and allowed time to fully emulsify into the oil before adding the next one. This takes much longer, but you get much more accurate blends and more consistent batch to batch.