Braskem Idesa’s Nanchital plant in Veracruz, Mexico, is the company’s flagship manufacturing site. It is one of the largest integrated polyethylene (PE) facilities in the Americas, producing 1.05 million tons of ethylene and PE per year from ethane. The plant was built to reduce the gap between Mexico’s local PE production and demand and to satisfy increasing requirements of the plastic processing industry.
A joint venture between Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem and Mexico-based Grupo Idesa, the firm was formed in 2010 and began production in March 2016.
To strengthen its competitiveness and position the company for Industry 4.0, parent company Braskem drew up plans for the digital transformation of its global businesses. The initiative mainly focused on three areas: production, logistics and administration. It resulted in identifying a number of operational improvements at the Nanchital plant that digital technologies likely could deliver.
One key area of concern was the widening disparity between the technology found in the control room and that used by workers around the plant.