A multi-platform industrial search system facilitates indexing and searching of plant-wide data residing on multiple different data platforms. The industrial search system automatically inventories industrial devices and other data sources located throughout a plant, and identifies available data items on each data source. The search system indexes the discovered data items in a federated data model that can subsequently be searched to locate data items or tags of interest. The federated data model records references to data items found on different types of data sources, including but not limited to industrial controller programs, human-machine interface applications, data historians, device documentation stores, inventory tracking systems, and other such data sources. The search system can also initiate automated searches of the federated data model in response to detected performance issues and deliver notifications and contextual information to plant personnel.