Industrial technical glossary
Industrial technical glossary with 60+ definitions on automation, sensors, blockchain, AI and compliance. Search and alphabet filter.
- AAS
- IEC 63278 standard defining how an industrial machine is digitised: identity, capabilities, documentation, connections. It is the «standardised digital twin» driven by IDTA (Industrial Digital Twin Association) and Plattform Industrie 4.0. Lets machines from different vendors talk to each other without bespoke integrations.
- ATEX
- EU Directive 2014/34/EU on equipment for use in potentially explosive atmospheres (refineries, chemicals, flour mills, mining). Defines zones (0, 1, 2, 20, 21, 22) and equipment categories. An ATEX-certified component is guaranteed not to cause ignition in its declared zone.
- CFR 21 Part 11
- US Food and Drug Administration regulation governing electronic records and electronic signatures in pharma and food industries. Requires data integrity, untampered audit trails, electronic signatures with unambiguous identification and non-repudiation. The American counterpart of EMA's Annex 11 GMP.
- DID
- Decentralized Identifier. W3C standard (DID Core) for creating digital identities that depend on no central authority — neither Google nor a State. Applied to industrial machinery, each piece of equipment carries a unique DID throughout its life-cycle, verifiable by third parties.
- DPP
- Digital Product Passport. EU Regulation 2024/1781 (ESPR) will require, from 2027, every industrial product sold in the EU to carry a digital identifier with its full life-cycle: manufacturer, materials, maintenance, repairs, recycling. The machine's «digital birth certificate», mandated by law and verifiable by anyone through a QR code.
- EaaS
- Equipment-as-a-Service. A business model where the OEM does not sell the machine: it delivers, operates and maintains it, and the customer pays per use (hours, cycles, kg produced). Real cases: TRUMPF Pay-per-Part, Kaeser Sigma Air Utility. Turns capex into opex and aligns the manufacturer with the asset's real performance.
- EDI
- Electronic Data Interchange. Old but widely used standards (EDIFACT, ANSI X12) for two business systems to swap orders, delivery notes and invoices automatically with no human intervention. Still the lingua franca of ERP integration in large corporations and industrial supply chains.
- ERC-3643
- Permissioned-token standard for Real-World Assets (RWA) on EVM chains. Unlike a vanilla token, ERC-3643 requires every holder to have a verified ONCHAINID (KYC/AML/jurisdiction) before receiving or transferring the asset. It is the standard used for regulation-compliant tokenisation, and in industry it lets you issue machine certificates, OEM warranties and usage rights that can only be held by accredited entities. It also allows recovering tokens if a customer loses keys, critical in B2B.
- ESPR
- Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, EU 2024/1781. Replaces the old Ecodesign Directive. Sets mandatory durability, repairability, recyclability and carbon-footprint requirements for almost every physical product sold in the EU, and mandates a Digital Product Passport (DPP) for each from 2027.
- EVM
- Ethereum Virtual Machine. Originally designed by Ethereum and now compatible with dozens of chains (Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Chain, etc.). The industry's de-facto standard: code written once runs on any EVM chain, cutting single-vendor lock-in risk.
- GMP
- Good Manufacturing Practices. Mandatory guidelines for pharma, cosmetics, food and medical-device industries on how products must be manufactured, controlled and documented to guarantee quality and safety. In the EU, GMP are published as EudraLex annexes; Annex 11 covers computerised systems.
- GdO
- Guarantee of Origin. Official certificate confirming that a given amount of electricity was produced from renewable sources or high-efficiency cogeneration. In Spain it is issued by CNMC; in Europe it corresponds to I-REC under EU Directive 2018/2001 RED II. Every certified MWh can be traded independently of the physical kWh.
- HMI
- Human-Machine Interface. The screen through which an operator controls and monitors an industrial machine. Traditionally an embedded touch panel with proprietary software; modern web HMIs run on any browser from tablet, mobile or control workstation, with no client to install and multi-role support for operator, maintenance and engineering.
- IEC 61131-3
- International IEC standard for programming PLCs and industrial controllers. Defines five languages — Ladder (LD), Function Block Diagram (FBD), Structured Text (ST), Sequential Function Chart (SFC) and Instruction List (IL) — and a common type and block model. CODESYS, TIA Portal, Sysmac Studio and TwinCAT all implement the standard.
- IEC 62443
- Family of international standards on cybersecurity for industrial automation and control systems. Defines security levels (SL 1-4), protection profiles and requirements for integrators, operators and component vendors. The reference framework whenever an industrial plant connects to the internet.
- IIoT
- Industrial Internet of Things. The industrial flavour of IoT: sensors, machines and plant systems connected to networks (local or cloud) to exchange real-time data. Differs from consumer IoT in its demand for determinism, robust cybersecurity (IEC 62443), hardware longevity (10-20 years) and operation in harsh conditions.
- IO-Link
- IEC 61131-9 point-to-point serial communication standard to connect industrial sensors and actuators to the PLC. Carries power and data on the same cable, identifies the sensor automatically and replaces it without re-engineering — the new device receives the previous configuration from the PLC. Turns the last metre of wiring into plug-and-play.
- LLM
- Large Language Model. AI model trained on massive text data to understand and generate natural language. Examples: GPT-4, Claude, Llama, Gemini. In industry they process technical manuals, generate documentation, handle HMI questions and read supplier emails for relevant information.
- M2M
- Machine-to-machine communication or settlement. Two industrial machines transact with each other without human intervention: machine A consumes a service from machine B and B charges A automatically. For example, a robot paying a compressor for every m³ of air consumed, or an OEM billed for every part produced.
- MES
- Manufacturing Execution System. Software layer between the ERP (deciding what to make) and the PLC/SCADA (running the making). Manages production orders, recipes, batch traceability, in-line quality and machine performance. The central nervous system of any modern plant.
- MQTT Sparkplug B
- Open specification on top of MQTT (lightweight messaging protocol) that adds a standardised schema for industrial data: each node declares its metrics, its life-cycle state and publishes with timestamp. Sparkplug B underpins the idea of a Unified Namespace — a single data tree that any plant system can understand without bespoke integrations.
- OEE
- Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Universal manufacturing KPI combining three factors: availability (% uptime), performance (% of theoretical speed) and quality (% of good parts). 85 % OEE is considered excellent; the global average is around 60 %. The standard measure to compare lines and plants.
- OEM
- Original Equipment Manufacturer. Company that designs and builds a complete machine or system to be sold to the end user (a maker of packaging machines, robots, treatment equipment). The OEM buys components (PLCs, motors, sensors) from its suppliers and integrates them. ISIGECO works both ways: as component supplier to the OEM and as the software/AI partner that differentiates the machine.
- OPC UA
- IEC 62541 standard for industrial machine-to-machine communication. Vendor-neutral, cross-platform (Windows, Linux, embedded) and security-by-design (encryption, authentication, X.509 certificates). Replaces the old COM/DCOM-based classic OPC and is the foundation of modern Industry 4.0 plants.
- PLC
- Programmable Logic Controller. Industrial computer designed to govern machines in real time: reads sensor signals, runs the control program and drives valves, motors and actuators. Most common vendors: Siemens, OMRON, Beckhoff, Rockwell (Allen-Bradley), Mitsubishi, Schneider and CODESYS-based ones. Programmed under IEC 61131-3.
- PROFINET
- Industrial Ethernet communication standard driven by Siemens and other PROFIBUS vendors. Lets controllers, sensors, drives and HMIs exchange real-time data over standard Ethernet. One of the most widespread industrial buses in Europe along with EtherCAT and EtherNet/IP.
- RAG
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Technique to make an LLM answer only over verifiable documents: instead of making things up, it first searches a document base (datasheets, manuals, logs) and then answers citing the exact source. The standard way to avoid LLM hallucinations in critical applications.
- RWA
- Real-World Assets. The on-chain representation of physical or financial assets (machines, real estate, debt, warranties, produced MWh). In industry, RWA means issuing machine certificates, usage rights or OEM warranties as regulated tokens (see ERC-3643) and trading them with built-in compliance.
- SCADA
- Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. Plant software that gathers PLC data in real time, presents it in synoptic screens for the operator and stores history for later analysis. Unlike an HMI (controlling one machine), SCADA supervises many machines and processes in a control room.
- SIL
- Safety Integrity Level. IEC 61508 / IEC 61511 metric classifying the acceptable risk of failure of an industrial safety function. SIL 1 is the lowest, SIL 4 the highest. Most machine-safety functions (emergency stop, speed monitoring) are designed to SIL 2 or SIL 3.