Top performing facility in control.

Braskem’s Neal Plant has been named by Control Station 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 (USA), 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.”

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@Control_Station @braskem  #Pauto #USA

Partnership connects control and Intelligence.

Helping manufacturers turn control loop diagnostics into faster operational decisions.

A strategic technology partnership with Dimension Software, a leading provider of industrial operations management platforms has been announced by Control Station. The collaboration connects Control Station’s PlantESP™ control loop performance monitoring (CLPM) platform with Dimension Software’s Asset Intellect™ operations intelligence environment, enabling manufacturers to operationalise control performance insights across their organisations.

Industry studies suggest that 30–40 percent of industrial control loops operate below optimal performance, contributing to lost production throughput, increased energy consumption, and inconsistent product quality. While modern analytics tools can identify these issues, many organisations struggle to translate diagnostic insights into coordinated operational improvements. The partnership between Control Station and Dimension Software addresses this challenge by aligning complementary technologies that help engineering and operations teams move more quickly from issue identification to corrective action.

Control Station’s PlantESP platform leverages a production facility’s existing historical process data to proactively identify poorly performing control loops, oscillations, valve issues, and tuning deficiencies that undermine regulatory control. These issues frequently contribute to process instability and production inefficiencies across continuous and batch manufacturing environments. In complimentary fashion, Dimension Software’s Asset Intellect platform provides a unified, browser-based operations management environment that aggregates, integrates, contextualises, and visualises operational and business data in real time. It enables organisations to create a centralised “single source of truth” for operations by integrating data from enterprise systems such as AVEVA PI, SAP/Maximo, Power BI, and other operational technologies such as process alarms, IIoT, and geo-spatial systems. Through the collaboration, PlantESP diagnostics identifying poorly performing control loops can be surfaced within Asset Intellect dashboards alongside production, maintenance, and operational data. Engineering and operations teams can then evaluate control performance issues within their broader operational context and initiate corrective workflows directly from the Asset Intellect environment.

“By partnering with Dimension Software, we are expanding our ecosystem of world-class technology partners while making it easier for manufacturers to translate control performance insights into operational improvements,” stated Damien Munroe, Vice President of Partner Development at Control Station. “The collaboration aligns with our ongoing mission of making process optimisation simpler and more accessible for industrial organisations.”

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in New Zealand, Dimension Software develops operational intelligence platforms that help industrial organisations unlock value from their existing data infrastructure. The company proudly supports over 15,000 enterprise users, spanning key process industries including chemicals, mining, oil & gas, and pulp & paper and empowering global organisations such as Abbott, BHP, and Enbridge. The company originally formed to deliver expanded capabilities within the AVEVA PI ecosystem, and has since introduced industry-leading platforms including Asset Intellect. Asset Intellect is modular, vendor-agnostic, and low-code configurable, allowing organisations to rapidly deploy operational intelligence solutions without extensive custom development. The platform enables operations teams to visualise performance metrics, manage operational workflows, and coordinate responses to emerging operational issues.

“We have first-hand experience with control loop performance monitoring and recognise both the importance of optimising regulatory control and the complexity involved in analysing process data,” said Yong The, Director of Business Development and Global Sales at Dimension Software. “Through our partnership with Control Station, we are able to offer customers a fully integrated and market-leading CLPM capability while continuing our mission of unlocking operational value from existing data and systems.”

PlantESP remains the industry’s leading CLPM solution, leveraging existing process data to uncover performance issues that degrade production throughput and product quality. By detecting oscillations, valve stiction, and poorly tuned loops, the platform helps manufacturers improve process stability and sustain high-performance regulatory control. By combining PlantESP’s controller diagnostics with Asset Intellect’s operational intelligence environment, the partnership enables manufacturers to connect control performance insights with enterprise decision workflows—helping operations teams reduce process variability, improve throughput, and sustain operational excellence.

The companies will introduce the collaboration to the industry through a joint webinar scheduled for April 2026, where engineering and operations leaders will learn how the integrated technologies help operationalise benchmarking and control loop performance insights. In June of this year, Control Station will participate in Dimension Software’s inaugural user conference where both organisations will showcase how the partnership supports data-driven manufacturing operations.

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Lead for growing optimisation services appointed.

Role targets billions lost annually to poor control loop performance and process variability.

Dr Chris Christie has joined Control Station as Director of Services. He will lead the continued expansion of Control Station’s Digital Lifecycle Solutions (DLS) program, which helps manufacturers maximise the operational value of their automation and process control investments. Control Station empowers process manufacturers to increase production efficiency and throughput. The company is headquartered in the United States with offices in Ireland*.

Dr Chris Christie

Demand for Control Station’s services has grown rapidly as manufacturers seek to extract greater value from existing control systems. Over the past year alone, contracts for the company’s Digital Lifecycle Solutions services increased 29.6 percent, reflecting increased industry focus on improving control loop performance, reducing process variability, and sustaining high-performance process control across production facilities.

Control Station’s PlantESP platform enables manufacturers to continuously monitor control system health and identify poorly performing control loops, oscillations, and other sources of process instability that limit throughput and product quality. However, many organisations struggle to fully realise or sustain these improvements due to resource constraints or limited process control expertise. Control Station’s DLS services address this gap by combining advanced analytics with hands-on engineering expertise to drive measurable operational improvements.

“Manufacturers are increasingly looking for partners who can help translate data into sustained operational gains,” said Dennis Nash, President of Control Station. “Chris brings extensive experience deploying PlantESP at enterprise scale along with deep expertise in process control strategy and services delivery. His leadership will help us continue to scale our services organisation while delivering even greater value to our customers.”

Dr. Christie is widely recognised within the automation community as an authority on control and enterprise-wide process optimisation, bringing more than 20 years of industrial experience across a broad range of applications and industries. His work spans mining, oil and gas operations, and food and beverage processing, where he led initiatives focused on improving process stability, increasing production throughput, and strengthening plant-wide control performance.

Prior to joining Control Station, Dr. Christie served as Process Control Capability Lead at Cargill, where he led the enterprise rollout of PlantESP across more than 100 facilities worldwide. The deployment supported operations across Cargill’s oilseeds, food ingredients, protein, salt, and bio-industrial business units, helping engineering teams to proactively identify control performance issues and implement improvements across large and complex manufacturing environments. He holds a PhD and MS in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech and a BS in Chemical and Process Engineering from the University of the West Indies. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Drexel University, where his work focused on applying an engineering process control approach to biological control systems.

“Sitting at the intersection of advanced analytics and manufacturing operations, Chris brings a unique combination of industrial experience and technical depth,” said Bob Rice, PhD, Vice President of Engineering at Control Station. “Customers increasingly rely on us not only for the technology to monitor control performance, but also for the expertise needed to translate those insights into sustainable operational improvements. Chris has built his career doing exactly that.”

According to McKinsey & Company, optimising industrial process control represents a $100–200 billion annual economic opportunity globally—yet much of this value remains unrealised. Much of this value remains unrealised because organisations lack the resources required to continuously monitor, diagnose, and improve control system performance. Control Station’s Digital Lifecycle Solutions were developed specifically to address this challenge. The services guide customers through three phases of performance improvement:

• Identify — diagnosing poorly performing control loops and sources of process variability
• Implement — deploying corrective actions and optimisation strategies
• Maintain — sustaining performance through continuous monitoring and engineering support

By combining advanced analytics with deep process control expertise, Control Station helps manufacturers improve throughput, reduce energy consumption, and sustain high-performance control across their operations. Control Station’s engineering teams provide support through a combination of remote monitoring, analytics-driven diagnostics, and onsite engineering engagement, enabling manufacturers to maintain high levels of control system performance throughout the lifecycle of their automation investments.

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• See Acquisition bolsters presence within EMEA.(12/3/2025)

@Control_Station #PAuto  #ControlsPR

Acquisition bolsters presence within EMEA.

Control Station has announced the successful acquisition and integration of its Roscrea (IRL) based joint venture and distribution partner. Originally formed in 2016 to support the needs of multi-national process manufacturers, Control Station Limited strengthened the company’s market positioning both in the EMEA region and globally. Through this acquisition Control Station significantly expands its international reach with the addition of expert sales and engineering services staff.

Reformed under the name Control Station Technologies Limited, the new entity operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Control Station Inc. It remains strategically located in Ireland and within the European Union’s rapidly growing market for industrial process automation solutions. According to Mordor Intelligence, the European industrial process automation market will exceed $31 billion by 2030 with the Middle East and Africa regions raising that projection to nearly $40 billion.

“Since 2016 Control Station has achieved significant growth among its international customer base particularly among multi-national manufacturers with operations in the EMEA region,” commented Damien Munroe, former joint venture principle and new Vice President of Partner Development. “This acquisition more closely aligns our resources and enhances our ability to deliver value-added process optimisation solutions.”

Control Station has long led the market for process modeling and PID controller tuning products with its award-winning portfolio of LOOP-PRO™ branded tools. In recent years, the company has taken on the mantle of leadership within plant- and enterprise-wide control loop performance monitoring (CLPM) and process analytics. PlantESP™ Loop Performance Monitoring is widely recognized as a highly intuitive and uniquely powerful CLPM solution, having been successfully deployed at production facilities operated by Top 10 Manufacturers within each of the Basic Materials, Chemicals, Food & Beverage, Pharmaceutical, and Pulp & Paper industries.

“Since its founding, Control Station has supported the needs of the global process automation market from our US base of operations,” shared Dennis Nash, President of Control Station Inc. “Today’s announcement sets the foundation for our future by bringing us closer to the process manufacturing community and positioning us to generate better outcomes for our customers.”

In addition to its portfolio of software products, Control Station offers a wide range of process optimization and educational services. With the recent introduction of System Health Monitoring (SHM), the company now provides a tiered service offering that leverages intelligence captured by PlantESP. The SHM service captures and reports critical system and controller performance data from participating PlantESP installations. The service facilitates rapid response to system resource issues and guidance for both achieving and maintaining world-class control.

Through the acquisition, Control Station significantly expands the team of sales and engineering resources under its direct control. Additions to the sales force include multiple seasoned professionals who are now focused more specifically on growing accounts within the EMEA region. Similarly, the expansion of Control Station’s engineering services team is expected to enhance the company’s ability to support a growing base of international and multinational customers. Control Station has successfully licensed its solutions to half of the manufacturers listed among the Fortune 500, and the company currently supports facilities located in over 70 countries.

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@Control_Station #PAuto #EMEA #Ireland

How is your systems' health?

Enabling process manufacturers can benchmark a plant’s regulatory control performance and measure the impact of process improvements.

A tiered service, System Health Monitoring (SHM), offering that leverages intelligence captured by Control Station's PlantESP Loop Performance Monitoring solution has been launched by the company. The service enables proactive monitoring of PlantESP deployments, facilitating rapid response to system resource issues and guidance for achieving world-class control. Dozens of PlantESP licensees and the associated production facilities enrolled in the service offering prior to today’s official launch.

Control Station’s PlantESP Loop Performance Monitoring solution capitalizes on a facility’s existing historical process data to assess PID controller performance on a plant- or an enterprise-wide basis. The software uncovers a range of common mechanical, tuning, and process interaction issues that undermine productivity and that contribute to unplanned downtime. PlantESP’s library of metrics automates the identification of controller-related performance issues, and its portfolio of advanced forensic tools simplifies the isolation of root-causes. Historically, monitoring systems like PlantESP could falter due to natural disasters and other unexpected events, and process manufacturers lacked a common method for assessing performance. The introduction of SHM assures that deployments operate effectively while also providing a benchmark of performance and facilitating the pursuit of world-class production.

“More than verifying a system’s health and providing a prioritized list of tasks, the SHM service benchmarks a plant’s overall effectiveness from a regulatory control perspective,” shared Jonathan Stevens, Control Station’s director of services. “The insights allow customers to see how their plant stacks up against others, and they provide a simple way for licensees to measure the positive impact of each change to their plant’s operation.”

Intelligence derived by PlantESP is transmitted daily via a compact and encrypted machine-readable file. The captured information equips Control Station with timely awareness of:

1. Server health: Basic evaluations of the system, including verification of server’s status (i.e., on vs. off), calculation engine status, and access to required databases.
2. Infrastructure analysis: Assessments of system functionality and architecture, including available server and database hard drive space, identification of misconfigured and/or invalid loops and tags, and documentation of “dead loops”.
3. Control benchmarking: A singular value for assessing a plant’s regulatory control performance and indicating net changes in performance over time.

The SHM offering utilises a variety of metrics and other intelligence to calculate an Overall Controller Effectiveness™ (OCE) value. OCE is a normalized measure for control loop operations based on the methodology for calculating overall equipment effectiveness. OCE provides a simple, quantitative means for benchmarking various levels of control within a plant. Through receipt of periodic scorecards, subscribers to the SHM service offering can establish plant or even corporate performance standards. Within the tiered service offering, a list of priority recommendations can be provided that aid customers with the targeting of PID-related issues that offer the greatest impact on control and production performance.

“The impact that process engineering and operations teams have on control and plant performance can be hard to measure,” noted Dr. Bob Rice, vice president of engineering at Control Station. “Our SHM service equips those teams with a simple gauge for evaluating their performance. With OCE they gain a means for tracking progress and perspective on their plant’s positioning relative to the broader manufacturing landscape.”

PlantESP has been successfully deployed at manufacturing facilities both globally and spanning all major segments of the process industries. Information provided for analysis is restricted to a PlantESP server’s available resources and aggregated values of the software’s metric calculations. No proprietary process data is transmitted. All comparisons within SHM assessments are anonymized to ensure that data cannot be traced to any individual source. As of today’s launch, the SHM service has been proven with customers spanning dozens of production facilities and encompassing over 23,000 unique PID control loops.

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@Control_Station #Pauto #Automation

Reliable and sustainable lifecycle Goals.

Tiered lifecycle offerings align service levels with unique end user needs, facilitating goal achievement and maximizing return on investment.

Control Station has expanded its client services capabilities with the rollout of Digital Lifecycle Solutions (DLS). The company is widely recognized as a leader in process analytic and optimization solutions. With the introduction of its DLS offerings, Control Station now empowers licensees of its award-winning products to maximize the value of their technology investments and to achieve their reliability and sustainability goals.

Control Station users located in over 70 countries—and growing—are already familiar with the company’s PlantESP control loop performance monitoring (CLPM) solution and its capabilities for both monitoring operating conditions and suggesting optimal tuning values. The new DLS offerings build upon application services previously delivered to licensees of the PlantESP solution. Developed to align with different stages of a manufacturer’s operational journey, the enhanced services leverage PlantESP’s comprehensive PID control loop analytics to proactively analyze asset performance on a plant- or an enterprise-wide basis, apply advanced forensic and state-based analytics, and capitalize on intelligence captured by other on-premises and cloud-based computing and visualization platforms.

“DLS provides a means for process manufacturers to amplify the impact of their technology investments in lockstep with their pursuit of business-critical reliability and sustainability initiatives,” shared Dennis Nash, Control Station’s President and CEO. “With the introduction of DLS we’re addressing a common challenge that routinely hampers the achievement of those goals.”

Users of advanced application technologies often struggle to capture the full potential of their investment due to a lack of training, overextended personnel, or other issues. In addition to the technology becoming shelfware, licensees of these technologies fail to meet more essential goals of improved asset reliability and sustainability. Control Station’s DLS offerings address these challenges directly, assisting users so they can take full advantage of PlantESP’s capabilities and realize valuable and ongoing optimization results.

“Alignment is the key to success,” noted Jon Stevens, the company’s Director of Services. “Meeting customers at their unique level of preparedness and equipping them with the support and tools that are appropriate for that specific time is what distinguishes our lifecycle approach.”

In collaboration with assigned project champions, the DLS offerings guide customers through three lifecycle phases: Identify, Implement, and Maintain. Each phase incorporates increasingly sophisticated methods of analysis and recommendations for corrective action. Customized DLS charters define the agreed-to project scope and document both performance goals and resource commitments. As a strategic partner in the charter’s execution, Control Station’s engineering staff lend expert support through onsite and virtual means.

Process optimization is a specialty skill, and CLPM software like PlantESP has made extraordinary advances in helping users of all types find success. Control Station is now partnering with users through DLS to emphasize value addition through service excellence, helping process manufacturers further amplify the benefits of their optimization technology investments.

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@Control_Station #Pauto #Automation

Workspace offers safer, more connected operating area!

The iOps Workspace Solution is a new operator workspace from Emerson that reduces human error and creates an ideal operating environment. The integrated operations (iOps) solution combines visualisation hardware and software with an advanced technical console to enable an operator to more quickly interact with multiple information sources, improving productivity and situation resolution.

Basic Configuration

The iOps Workspace Solution - developed in conjunction with workspace providers Barco, Vertiv and Evosite - combines many operator input sources into a single, virtual workspace - integrating information at the operator interface. Operators only need to log in once, at a single workspace, to gain access to all monitoring and control areas for which they are responsible.

“Emerson’s new iOps Workspace Solution - with its customisable user interface, enables operators to securely control and monitor numerous sources residing on different networks” says Todd Brase, project services marketing manager for the iOps Workspace Solution. “This provides the operations team with a common operational picture, helping them to make better decisions faster.”

Applicable across multiple industries, the new solution especially suits oil and gas, refining, petrochemical, and life sciences operations where a centralised control room is used to manage multiple process areas and interact with a myriad of enterprise applications. The iOps Workspace Solution can manage inputs from any number of third-party software applications, live video feeds, and Emerson’s array of automation software and hardware including the DeltaV™ distributed control system. Barco’s operator workspace software, OpSpace provides an `integrated at the glass experience’ that helps control room operators work in a more intuitive way.

“We started development of OpSpace by first gathering feedback from operators in the field, describing their ideal way of working,” says Chris Sluys, vice president operator experience and chief operating officer at Barco. “Then we designed the system that answers all their needs. This vastly improves the operators’ efficiency and effectiveness, and ultimately raises the quality of decision-making.”

Vertiv and Evosite offer advanced technical furniture designed to operate 24/7 in control rooms and operations centres. Combining adjustable sit-stand settings with spacious, high-pressure laminate work surfaces gives operators an ergonomic work area that reduces strain and allows them to work more effectively.

Theatre configuration

@EMR_Automation  #PAuto @HHC_Lewis 

Improved image quality first, system update later

Step-by-step change-over, first step: process images for the standard resolution of current 19“ systems are displayed 1:1 centered on the 22“/24“ wide-screens

For upcoming replacements of visualisation stations with 19" screens in the conventional 5:4 format, R. STAHL offers a solution that allows users to modernise in two steps and in their own time. Modern 22" or 24" devices of the T-IND or T-EX series on the one hand immediately improve user-friendliness compared to older systems, since LED backlights ensure a more brilliant display and thus a better readability of the images. On the other hand, the purchase of these wide-screen devices not only represents mere maintenance, but also a future-proof investment. Displays of this generation already pave the way for a future upgrade of operating and process control systems, all of which are designed with distinctly higher resolutions and in 16:9 or 16:10 formats.

To ensure a comfortable change-over, all 22" and 24" devices of the T-series have been optimised for such a step-by-step migration. Process images of existing systems are displayed 1:1 on the new devices, without any need for additional project engineering or configuration. At a later upgrade of the operating system and the process control system, the large wide-screens already provide the space and opportunity for the effective display of new process images. By upgrading to new displays already today, with a system upgrade planned for a later date, users also benefit from the current lower prices and divide their investments in operating technology at their process plant in two, with a positive impact on current liquidity.

In Ireland, Stahl is represented by Douglas Control & Automation.

Leader under forty recognised

Control Station has announced that Dr. Robert C. Rice has been recognized in Control Engineering’s “Leaders Under 40” awards.

Dr R.C.Rice

The “Leaders Under 40” is a new program designed to identify and recognize young engineers who have made significant contributions to the automation industry and to the profession of control engineering.  Dr. Rice has made significant contributions in the field of process control, particularly in terms of innovations in the arena of PID controller monitoring and loop tuning technologies.  Under Dr. Rice’s direction, Control Station is widely recognized as the leading provider of PID diagnostic and optimization solutions.

“I feel privileged to be recognized by Control Engineering,” stated Dr. Rice, Control Station’s Vice President of Engineering.  “I love this industry and remain fascinated by the challenges and opportunities facing today’s process manufacturers.  Empowering them to improve their competitiveness through the use of innovative technologies is remarkably satisfying.”

“Control Engineering recognizes Bob Rice among other young thought leaders based on their strong contributions to the profession of industrial engineering,” said Mark T. Hoske, Control Engineering content manager. “I have to believe that his achievements at Control Station and his engineering-minded hobbies will help inspire the next-generation of leaders and show the world what’s fun and worthwhile about engineering.”

“In addition to Dr. Rice we recognized 18 other remarkable engineering leaders in our inaugural ‘Leaders Under 40’ program.  We certainly commend all 29 entrants and encourage engineering enthusiasts of all ages to share their wisdom with Control Engineering in other ways. We expect nominations to open approximately mid-2011 for the next ‘Leaders Under 40’ program.”

Dr. Rice has led the transformation of Control Station from just another technology company, to the recognized leader in PID controller monitoring and tuning solutions.  He has held principal responsibility for all product development initiatives and engineering services since joining Control Station in 2004.  During that time Control Station’s software has been repeatedly recognized for innovation and ease-of-use, receiving two Engineers’ Choice Awards and two Vaaler Awards. 

Beyond technology innovation Dr. Rice has worked tirelessly to promote the use of industry best-practices throughout the process industries.  Over the years he has been invited to speak on process control best-practices at numerous industry conferences and sections of ISA.  Most recently Dr. Rice was recognized by the St Louis Section with their 2009 Speaker of the Year award.