Industrial Activity at CERN

The decrease in the number of CERN staff creates the need for optimization of the non-core, infrastructure-related activities. An industrial, service-orientated approach has long been considered as an appropriate way to cope with the problem of diminishing resources. This paper presents industrial and service activity issues at CERN based on the experience of the exploitation of the power network. The most important problems linked to the application of the industrial approach to the exploitation of equipment in the CERN research environment are covered. These include the interface between accelerators and electrical exploitation services, external and internal regulations, sharing of responsibility between CERN staff and external contractors, continuous modification of clients' requirements, the balance between the cost of accelerator downtime versus the cost of infrastructure upgrade. A benchmarking through a comparison with a big industrial manufacturer is followed by recommendations for possible improvements.