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From: Pere.Mato@cern.ch
Date: 8/13/97
Time: 5:31:48 PM
Remote Name: 137.138.117.88
Remote User: Pere Mato
Dear LHCb Colleague,
The Controls Group in the ECP division at CERN with the support of the control coordinators for the 4 LHC experiments has launched a "Request for Information" to survey the commercial market for an industrial control system which could be used to the 4 LHC experiments. Please find attached the memo from Axel Daneels asking for assistance in finding additional companies to which to send the request for information documents. Thank-you for your coorperation. Cheers,
Pere Mato
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Concerns:Commercial Controls for LHC Experiments? -Towards a Survey - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CERN, 12 Aug. 1997. Dear Colleague,
Introduction ------------ We are currently surveying the commercial market in search for industrial control systems that could be applicable to the four LHC Experiments.
The controls we are considering is the so-called "Slow Controls": i.e. the controls that is responsible for ensuring that all the detector equipment is in a suitable configuration for physics data to be performed. It is however not responsible for the acquisition and the datataking itself.
Scope of the Survey -------------------
The systems we are looking for fall into one of the following categories:
* integrated control systems supplying supervisory and front-end facilities that can be customised to the needs of the LHC experiments, * customisable supervisory or front-end systems that allow to be integrated with other systems, * tool-kits: i.e. a set of tools and customisable applications to construct an on-line process control system.
It is also assumed that maintenance support to the system will be provided by the vendor.
Procedure ---------
This survey is carried out officially through CERN's administration and is referred to as "Request for Information DO-17331". It is intended to proceed in 2 to 3 successive phases in which the systems are evaluated in increasing levels of details.
We hope to come to a conclusion by mid 1998.
A set of documents have been prepared:
1. a cover letter (of course)
2. a brief technical description introducing the LHC experiments, how they are operated and what are their control needs.
3. a brief description of the qualification criteria on which the proposed systems will be evaluated;
4. a rather detailed questionnaire that will be used to assess whether the product meets the required criteria (cf. 2).
Todate these documents have been sent out to ~ 57 European Companies and 3 in USA.
Request forAssistance ---------------------
We are aware that this is by far not representative for the real market situation: there are many more companies in USA and also elsewhere in the world (e.g Japan, Korea, India, ...) that enter into consideration.
Therefore, in order to obtain as broad a view as possible of what is available on the market worldwide, I would very much appreciate it if you could let me know of any companies (address, and if possible also name of a contact person) in your country that do / might supply such control systems.
Thank you very much for your assistance.
I am looking forward to your feedback.