Supervisory control theory, introduced by Ramadge and Wonham, provides a method to synthesize a supervisor that keeps a discrete-event system model inside a previously specified safe state space. In order to apply this technique on physical plants, the user has to provide a model representation of the latter, on the one hand, and of the safety specification on the other hand. This contribution introduces three methods to improve that modeling process and decrease the necessary manual effort by syntactic means. These are hierarchical namespaces for events and automata, automaton templates with abstract roles, and conditional transitions and prohibitions.