Neal Plant Selected from More than 150 Facilities for Top OCE Score

Control Station, Inc. has named Braskem’s Neal Plant as the recipient of its inaugural Top Performing Facility Award. The recognition honors the Braskem facility’s exceptional performance in achieving world-class PID control loop effectiveness as measured by Overall Controller Effectiveness (OCE).

As process manufacturers increasingly adopt data-driven performance metrics to improve reliability and efficiency, benchmarking control loop effectiveness has become a critical component of operational excellence. Located in Kenova, West Virginia, the Neal Plant distinguished itself from more than 150 production facilities by achieving the highest average benchmark for plant-wide regulatory controller performance during calendar year 2025. Through proactive monitoring and analysis of PID control loops, the site achieved industry-leading OCE scores that reflect superior controller utilization, minimized variability, and sustained operational excellence.

“Braskem’s Neal Plant exemplifies what is possible when organizations prioritize their control infrastructure as a strategic asset,” said Dennis Nash, President of Control Station. “Their commitment to continuously monitoring and improving control loop effectiveness has delivered measurable gains in stability, throughput, and efficiency. This data-driven approach to optimization is precisely what the Top Performing Facility Award was created to celebrate.”

The award was based on a year-long, data-driven evaluation of OCE scores collected monthly from a diverse set of global manufacturing sites using Control Station’s PlantESP Loop Performance Monitoring solution. As an analogue to Overall Equipment Effectiveness, OCE provides a holistic measure of controller health by assessing factors that characterize an individual PID loop’s availability, performance, and quality. Because OCE is computed using normalized values, performance can be compared across different loop types and aggregated seamlessly from loop to unit, plant, and even enterprise levels. This approach is helping establish OCE as a standard benchmark for control performance across the process industries.

Braskem’s achievement reflects a sustained focus on best practices in loop tuning, performance monitoring, and proactive maintenance. By leveraging advanced analytics and standardized workflows, the Neal Plant has improved process stability and reduced operator intervention, unlocking incremental production capacity and delivering measurable improvements in cost efficiency and operational reliability.

“Achieving world-class regulatory control performance requires both the right technology and a culture of continuous improvement,” commented Bob Rice, PhD, Control Station’s Vice President of Engineering. “Braskem’s Neal Plant has demonstrated leadership in both areas, delivering measurable gains in operational performance and overall efficiency.”