CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR THE LHC SUPERCONDUCTING MAGNET TEST BENCHES

The configuration management system for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) superconducting magnet test facility has been integrated with the already existing software enforcing quality assurance procedures of the LHC - the Manufacturing and Test Folder (MTF). Such a solution provides one common access point to all the data relevant to each of the tested magnets. The MTF software was developed at CERN in order to capture the design, manufacturing and test data for equipment in the LHC project. Being an integral part of CERN's Engineering/Equipment Data Management System (EDMS), MTF is a web-based application built on top of two commercial software packages: Axalant from Eigner and Datastream's MP5 asset tracking tool. The CERN developed part of MTF complements the MP5 software with an easy-to-use web interface. Within the framework of the configuration management project, new modules have been developed to store parameter settings and to ease the task of the test operators and minimize error- prone keyboard data introduction. Test bench hardware configuration can now be fully recorded using an industrial portable PC and a barcode reader. The configuration data stored in MTF can be read by the actual control systems in the test bench facility in an automatic way.