article - Industrial signal tagging

Start by formalising it. Reconstruct the rule from the existing installation, have operations and maintenance approve it, then freeze it. As long as the convention stays implicit, no automation is possible.

No. The tool handles deterministic transformations and escalates ambiguous cases. An engineer who knows the project then checks and approves the output, and that step is what makes the result trustworthy.

The most common are KKS, widely applied in cement and power generation, IEC 81346 for the designation of industrial installations, and ISA-5.1 for instrumentation. In addition, many sites apply a naming convention specific to their own group.

Anywhere from a few days to several weeks, depending on volume. A file of 900 to 1,000 signals typically represents one to two weeks of engineering time if teams work through it row by row.

Because existing lists come from mixed sources: legacy PLCs, supplier documentation, spreadsheets maintained by hand. Before integration into the new environment, every signal has to be brought into the single convention the site has defined.

Signal tagging assigns a unique, structured identifier to every piece of information the process exchanges with the control system. In practice, that identifier indicates where the equipment sits, what it does and what type of signal it carries.