How Enterprise Plants Identify Hidden Productivity Loss

Built for ARC Industry Leadership Forum attendees running large, continuous manufacturing operations.

In continuous and semi-continuous plants, performance losses rarely come from obvious failures. They come from small, persistent sources of variability buried inside hundreds or thousands of PID loops. Over time, those losses show up as reduced throughput, excess energy use, off-spec production, and increased operator intervention.

Why Overall Controller Effectiveness Matters at Scale

Overall Controller Effectiveness (OCE) was created to make those losses visible.

OCE is a control-specific metric that measures how well PID loops are performing relative to what is achievable. It uses existing control system data to expose where control performance is limiting plant productivity, even when traditional KPIs appear acceptable.

For enterprise-scale operations, OCE enables teams to:

• Pinpoint control-related productivity losses
• Prioritize improvement efforts by economic impact
• Sustain APC and optimization initiatives
• Reduce variability without increasing risk

ARC Forum Technical Brief

The publication explains how OCE works, why conventional metrics fail to surface control problems, and how mature operations teams use OCE to maintain tighter, more predictable control over time.

ARC Forum Takeaway

If your organization is already investing in optimization or advanced control, OCE reveals whether the control layer is enabling those efforts or quietly holding them back.

Next Step

If this describes your environment, the next step is a PlantESP enterprise demo.