LHC Accelerator Fault Tracker - First Experience

Availability is one of the key performance indicators of LHC operation, being directly correlated with integrated luminosity production. An effective tool for availability tracking is a necessity to ensure a coherent capture of fault information and relevant dependencies on operational modes and beam parameters. At the beginning of LHC Run 2 in 2015, the Accelerator Fault Tracking (AFT) tool was deployed at CERN to track faults or events affecting LHC operation. Information derived from the AFT is crucial for the identification of areas to improve LHC availability, and hence LHC physics production. For the 2015 run, the AFT has been used by members of the CERN Availability Working Group, LHC Machine coordinators and equipment owners to identify the main contributors to downtime and to understand the evolution of LHC availability throughout the year. In this paper the 2015 experience with the AFT for availability tracking is summarised and an overview of the first results as well as an outlook to future developments is given.