Bill of Materials, do it and do it well, and bring it to your event
 

I was an inspector today. What an experience. The biggest problem we had was the Bill of Materials. Teams, please make your Bill of Materials if you haven't already, and bring it with you to each event. Even if you have passed inspection at a previous event, you need to present your BOM at every event. I got teams who forgot it. I got teams who never even made one. Please do your inspectors a favor and bring it with you to your event Thursday morning, and that does not mean scribbled on a napkin. An Excel spreadsheet with part description, quantity, price, and supplier is preferable. I wish FIRST would rule a little more specifically on this. Some teams spend hours making elaborate Excel spreadsheets and it is a disservice to them for the inspectors to accept BOMs that have been hastily written and are not complete and detailed. It is just as important of an inspection item as something like meeting the weight limit. But some time and care into your BOMs please. You will get out of this program what you put into it. If you scribble down your BOM real quick during inspection, you are not only barely meeting the rules, you are cheating yourself out of the quite useful experience of making one.

That is all, thanks.

Re: Bill of Materials, do it and do it well, and bring it to your event
 

I heartily agree with you. Our BOM is a spreadsheet broken down by subsystem with subtotals for each subsystem.

Re: Bill of Materials, do it and do it well, and bring it to your event
 

I do the same for ours. I started this year including both supplier/vendor and the supplier part number or model number. The reasoning being that if we have turn over of mentors, we still have a list that says, what is that part and where did we got it in future years. I also added a column (only on the electronic) that shows the true cost/value of the item including kit parts. That way I can show the kids and people who are concerned about things like the entry fee, exactly how much the robot costs over all.

Re: Bill of Materials, do it and do it well, and bring it to your event
 

I've volunteered as lead robot inspector at STL for three years now, and have inspected at Buckeye and at the Championship in 2005. This year I am also inspecting at Waterloo.

In my experience, the best example of a correctly prepared bill (as required by <R47>, <R48>, and <R105>) that I have see is the one that was presented to me yesterday by Team 68 Truck Town Thunder. A really first rate job!

I did not get to meet the team member who actually prepared the cost analysis, but I did tell the team captain that it would very nice if 68 would post a whitepaper here on CD and/or present a tuturial at the Championship on how to do this correctly.