We report on the design, specification and implementation of a situation awareness module used for assistive systems in manufacturing, in the context of Industry 4.0. A recent survey of research done in Germany and Europe, concerning assistive technology in industry shows a very high potential for “intelligent assistance” by combining smart sensors, networking and AI. While the state of the art concerning actual technology in industrial use points more towards user-friendly, speech-based interaction with personal assistants for information retrieval (typically of in-house documentation), the research presented here addresses an enterprise-level assistance system that is supported by a number of specialized Assistance Units that can be customized to the end users’ specifications and that range from tutoring systems to tele-robotics. Key to the approach is situation awareness, which is achieved through a combination of a-priori, task knowledge modelling and dynamic situation assessment on the basis of observation streams coming from sensors, cameras and microphones. The paper describes a working fragment of the industrial task description language and its extensions to cover also the triggering of assistive interventions when the observation modules have sent data that warrants such interventions.