Tags

An InTouch Human Machine Interface (HMI) application is a graphical representation of the components in a manufacturing environment. Plant operators work with this graphical interface to monitor and administer their manufacturing processes.

The figure below shows an example of a pump that is a component of a manufacturing process. The pump has properties with associated values. Pressure, RPM, and status are pump properties whose values are monitored through an HMI.

A tag represents a data item in an InTouch HMI application. You use tags to make specific component properties accessible as data items from a manufacturing environment. In the figure above, the PumpState tag indicates whether the pump is on or off. You create tags for components in your manufacturing environment whose properties you want to monitor or control in your InTouch application.

You can use different types of tags for the different types of data collected from a manufacturing component. For example, the PumpState tag returns a Boolean On/Off value to indicate if the pump is running or stopped. You assign the appropriate type of InTouch tag for the type of data that you want to be part of your application.