A system for managing critical knowledge for accelerator subsystems: Pansophy

Accelerator development and construction projects often intentionally push the envelope of well-established technical performance and manageable complexity. In addition, the desire for efficient retention and exploitation of accumulated experience across the multi-decade life cycles of major installations calls for a robust yet user-friendly knowledge management system. To meet these needs, we are deploying a new web-based system at Jefferson Lab: Pansophy. This system is a custom integration of several commercial software utilities, DocuShare/sup TM/, ColdFusion/sup TM/, Matlab/sup TM/, Ingres/sup Tm/, and common desktop programs. Users of the system range from process managers, shop-floor technicians, and test engineers to after-the-fact data miners and operations staff. The system integrates important quality assurance elements of procedural control, automated data accumulation into a secured central database, prompt and reliable data query and retrieval, and online analysis tools, all accessed by users via their platform-independent web browsers. A system overview, a completed pilot project, and implementation experience to date will be presented.