ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Cosylab, Ljubljana
Controls groups at large accelerators are routinely called upon to build and support controls for virtually all machine systems. While construction projects within the US DOE system are normally carefully planned and tracked by project management professionals, this support ends when construction milestones are met. However, once construction is complete, work continues as the group performs ongoing support and maintenance while also implementing requested system improvements and upgrades. With customers from virtually every accelerator and experiment group, the demands on the group often exceed the capacity of available resources. This type of diverse workload needs to be well organized and managed in order set proper priorities and ensure efficient use of resources. At SNS, we have collaborated with Cosylab to develop Controls Request Tracker (CRT), which is adapted from the Cosylab Project Manager (CPM) software. The resulting system not only provides standard request tracking features, but is interfaced to the SNS Logbook and work control system. This paper will discuss CRT and how we use it to manage the work of our controls group.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Failure mode effects analysis (FMEA) has been used in industry for design, manufacturing and assembly process quality control. It describes a formal approach for categorizing how a process may fail and for prioritizing failures based on their severity, frequency and likelihood of detection. Experience conducting a partial FMEA of an accelerator subsystem and its related control system will be reviewed. The applicability of the FMEA process to an operational accelerator control system will be discussed.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
ORNL RAD, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) injection and extraction kicker systems were designed by Brookhaven National Laboratory for SNS. The kicker control system is integrated using EPICS and has been used for supporting SNS ring commissioning and now for SNS beam production operations. One of the major challenges for SNS operations is to control beam loss. SNS Injection and Extraction Kicker Waveform monitor system has been implemented to support SNS high power operation. In this paper we present a method for kicker power supply waveform monitor system by using current industrial technology and recent operation experiences.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
A new alarm system toolkit has been implemented at SNS. The toolkit handles the Central Control Room (CCR) 'annunciator', or audio alarms. For the new alarm system to be effective, the alarms must be meaningful and properly configured. Along with the implementation of the new alarm toolkit, a thorough documentation and rationalization of the alarm configuration is taking place. Requirements and maintenance of a robust alarm configuration have been gathered from system and operations experts. In this paper we present our practical experience with the vacuum system alarm handling configuration of the alarm toolkit.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is continuing its ramp up of beam power, while simultaneously increasing production hours and striving for reduced unplanned downtime. For the large, highly-distributed EPICS-based control system of the SNS, this demand for increased availability is combined with the need for ongoing system maintenance, upgrades and improvements. Causes of recent control system related downtime will be reviewed along with experiences in addressing the competing needs of availability and system improvements.