LHC cable production in Japan

Supply of the dipole outer layer and the quadrupole superconducting cable (cable 2) is one of the major contributions by Japanese firms to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project. In April 2003, after 57 months since the contract agreement, the production of cable 2 was successfully completed at the Japanese firm in charge, the Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. (FEC). The amount of the produced cable 2 was 92 ton by weight and 575 km in length, which corresponds to one octant ( 1/8 ) of the cable 2 required for the LHC. In this production many new management schemes were tried and introduced based on the close collaboration between the customer (CERN) and the supplier (FEC) in order to achieve the overall uniformity of the cable 2 performance. The author presents the cable 2 performance obtained and the procedures employed for the control of quality, delivery rate and production efficiency. The author believes that such an experience is useful as the measurements for an on-time production of uniform superconducting wire and cable with a highly demanding specification in a future project.