Decoupling CERN accelerators

The accelerator complex at CERN is a living system. Accelerators are being dismantled, upgraded or change their purpose. New accelerators are built. The changes do not happen overnight, but when they happen they may require profound changes across the handling systems. Central timings (CT), responsible for sequencing and synchronization of accelerators, are good examples of such systems. This paper shows how over the past twenty years the changes and new requirements influenced the evolution of the CTs. It describes experience gained from using the Central Beam and Cycle Manager (CBCM) CT model, for strongly coupled accelerators, and how it led to a design of a new Dynamic Beam Negotiation (DBN) model for the AD and ELENA accelerators, which reduces the coupling, increasing accelerator independence. The paper ends with an idea how to merge strong points of both models in order to create a single generic system able to efficiently handle all CERN accelerators and provide more beam time to experiments and LHC.