Scientific Articles
Cosylab understands you
With an immense base of scientific articles from different accelerator community conferences Cosylab proves that it moves with the times considering the newest technology. Nevertheless, it is also very connected with its clients, since most scientific articles were written during collaboration with clients. This proves that beside successfully performed work the most important for Cosylab is also building friendships with partners.
All articles from the conference can be viewed by clicking the link base of articles on the right tab.
Selected articles:
Can the Accelerator Control System be Bought from Industry?
This presentation is intended for project leaders and specialists, whose components depend on the control system, which is nearly everybody apart from control experts. The presentation will explain the basic concepts of an accelerator control system, illustrate the similarities and differences among the most popular packages, which are nicely disguised in acronyms such as EPICS, TANGO, TINE, DOOCS, COACK, XAL, CDEV, etc. and compare them to commercial control systems (DCS and SCADA) and LabView.
Article can be downloaded here.
Co-sourcing Development of Accelerator Controls
Frequently, accelerator facilities make use of products and services offered by the industry. This paper’s focus is on such outsourcing of control system hardware and software. Firstly, an attempt is made to explain the facility’s motivation for seeking outside help, which is typically due to lack of resources, technology or knowledge. Then, the risks of outsourcing are enumerated. To mitigate them, the industrial partner should have not only the adequate technical expertise, but also a reliable, yet agile management and quality assurance process that meets the facility’s expectations, schedule, budget constraints, maintenance and support needs.
Article can be downloaded here.
Control systems for new large projects
We discuss control systems of accelerators and similar projects that are presently still in design and early construction phases, such as FAIR, ESS, MedAustron, NSLS II, ITER, etc, and comparing them against the approaches of the last two decades and explain the new trends...
Article can be downloaded here.
Managing a Large Number of Projects
Cosylab is of academic origin, therefore the spirit,organization and work procedures are very much like in research institutes. In addition, we work on about two dozen projects simultaneously for customers on four continents, which requires a lot of travel and on-site work. Commercially available project management tools are not suited to manage such diversity. We have therefore adopted a set of open source tools, implemented some custom additions and integrated the tools into a coherent product to suit our purpose. Even more important than the tools are the underlining project management processes that have evolved within Cosylab over the last ten years. The processes are based on project management theory and best practices from research institutes, industry and our own experience. In this article, both the tools and the processes will be presented with relevant examples.
Article can be downloaded here.
Management System Tailored to Research Institutes
As all disciplines, project management has a set of rules that must be followed and set of recommendations that make work easier. But as in all engineering, there is no single magical formula or equation, no matter how much managers and physicists alike would love to have it. We present a working solution tailored to academic projects that requires only a minimum of effort and discipline and results in huge benefits, which will be presented in this article.
Article can be downloaded here.