"VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

This thread is based on discussion that's taken place previously in threads found here and here

FIRST's 2006 rules define a VENDOR as someone that "must be normally able to ship any general (i.e., non-FIRST unique) product within five
business days of receiving a valid purchase request."

It's unclear whether the language about "non-FIRST unique" products is intended to exempt them from shipping delays or if it's meant to disqualify those selling "FIRST-unique" products as vendors altogether. Anecdotal evidence and the success of AndyMark suggests the latter possibility is incorrect, but there is probably some wiggle-room with regard to what is considered a FIRST-unique product.

If the former possibility is indeed true, that means that teams and individuals can offer for sale unique designs (or, in fact, one-of-a-kind designs) with no expectation that such products will be shipped within five days or that they'll be available to multiple teams.

Common sense might suggest that the intent is to prevent teams from using elaborate, custom-built components that are unavailable to other teams.

The rule goes on to further explain that, "certain unusual circumstances,
such as 1,000 FIRST teams all ordering the same part at once from the same VENDOR, may cause atypical delays in shipping due to backorders for even the largest VENDORS. Such delays due to higher than normal order rates are excused."

If the part in question is a "FIRST-unique" part, is it reasonable to consider that many orders during build season is not an atypical circumstance and that the five day turnaround must be maintained, or is it sufficient that a VENDOR be able to meet the imposed deadline at any time during the year?

If I can't get an umbrella during Seattle's rainy season but have no trouble walking into a store in July and getting the pick of the litter, does the umbrella manufacturer qualify as a vendor?

What does the community think about selling two products that are inextricably linked for proper operation separately to circumvent existing rules about the maximum cost for COTS components? Can someone sell all the parts to a gearbox except shafts for $400 and then charge another $100 for the remaining parts?

Are resellers of parts considered VENDORs and to what extent? Consider that I could place an order for 10,000 of AndyMark's shifting gearboxes, creating an enormous lead time for other's expecting to get the same product. I might then double the price of that product and offer it for sale. I can, theoretically, ship the product within five days of receiving an order except in circumstances where my supplier, AndyMark, in unable to provide them quickly enough. Do lead time problems further up the supply chain affect my ability to qualify as a VENDOR?

It's reasonable to expect that someone considering making a product available for sale to FIRST teams would gauge interest before moving forward, but is it similarly reasonable for that vendor's stock on hand to be determined by specific interest expressed before the product is formally for sale and for orders from above and beyond those initially showing interest being subject to increased lead times due to unforeseen demand?

I understand that this is lawyering a rule to death to a new degree and the intent is generally well understood. The more I consider the implication of what's to come, however, the more it becomes clear that there ought to be some more explanation given to what qualifies someone as a VENDOR and what expectations the community and FIRST have regarding the availability of unique products.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

RE: This Post

If we take the ’06 VENDOR rule in its entirety, it is clear that the vendor guarantees delivery to ALL FIRST teams. It does not say that the vendor is allowed to limit production based upon a preseason interest inventory. On the contrary, it says that the vendor must not limit supply. The way I see it, if the supplier fails to meet demand, then they no longer meet the requirements, which leads me to believe that the mechanism is not fit to use on a FIRST competition robot.

I do not believe that the Breco-Flex belts can be considered a FABRICATED ITEM in this case because the belts would not be cut to a “custom” length. They would be a “standard” length; I.E., made to fit Outback drives. So, I do not see how Outback can pass the buck to Breco-Flex in order to extend the delivery period.

It’s times like this that I’m glad I’m not one of the powers that be. Because if I were, and Outback failed to deliver, then there would be a bunch of teams stuck with tracks they couldn’t use.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

Forget the 2006 rules for a minute and think if this is a direction that the First competition should go. It's just a drive train assembly now but in a few years could escalate into entire robots being ordered. Then we would have the robot procurement season instead of the build season. What starts off as a single assembly can lead down a path I do not think First should go. I believe some how there needs to be a distinction between parts and components and entire assemblies. How does this development fit in with the vision of First. If First becomes a specing event and fund raising event I'm out of here.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other err
 

Let me stir the pot...
Would IFI fail to meet FIRST's vendor requirements? They could not provide enough circuit breaker panels for all FIRST teams during the 2006 season.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

I don't think that anything AndyMark sells can be considered "FIRST unique", because their wares are available to any member of the public. And even if some of their items are designed to be used in FIRST, it doesn't preclude an unanticipated use of a product for a non-FIRST application.
"VENDORS must not limit supply or make a product available to just a limited number of FIRST Robotics Competition teams." That sounds like limiting supply.
I don't think the idea is to limit custom-built components, so much as to limit buying custom (or exceedingly rare) components. The implication is that if you get your custom items made by a sponsor, for free, you can do what you want. But if you just throw money at the problem, you have additional restrictions.
One might expect that the most likely time to be processing 1 000 FIRST orders would be during the build season. It seems to me that the rule is intended to excuse such delays, even (and indeed, especially) during the build season; see the 2^ndsub-bullet in the definition of vendor. However, the definition of a "normal" order volume is pretty much impossible to discern, when dealing with a company that has no order history for the COTS item in question.
Legal. Since some assembly is required, it's two items. There's really no clean way to restrict this, because of the infinite number of permutations of assemblies that could possibly exist. There's nowhere to draw a line.
I'd have to say yes, because I'm confident that AndyMark never suggested that they could ship 10 000 gearboxes at once, to anyone. The problem doesn't seem to be at their end; it's at the vendor's end, because they advertised delivery times which they knew that they couldn't honour. But that makes for an interesting point; currently the rules don't distinguish between a vendor who is backordered on one part, and a vendor who is backordered on every part.

That's a bit of a problem, because it suggests that as soon as you fail to make one component available as advertised, your vendor status is in jeopardy. A strict reading of the rules could interpret this to mean that failing to supply a part to one team nullifies a company's right to be a vendor to all teams. That's obviously insane, and unenforceable, but it seems to be a valid interpretation, based on the letter of the rules.
That's a very good question. It goes back to not knowing what constitutes "normal", because of the small market and small volume of parts. I might be persuaded to say that because a vendor knows that FIRST is its target market, it should attempt to assess the likely buying habits of the FIRST community, and plan accordingly—relying on previously communicated interest seems insufficient. Of course, without knowing the nature of the next game, it's a little tricky for them to draw any conclusions—why would they prepare a sufficient quantity of propellers in advance, unless they knew that it was going to be a water game?

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other err
 

I want to start by saying I come from team 222. My opinion is my own and may or may not reflect the view of my team. As a whole on 222 we manufacture as many parts as we can. We have not used any AndyMark products or kit-bot parts or anything like that.(not ragging on ay teams that do either...keep reading) With that said FIRST has seen alot of changes in my 10 years of involvement. Robots went from running on R-NETS and cordless drill battery packs to what they are today. The technology that has developed in FIRST is incredible. Until the 2005 season teams had to construct robots from the ground up. In the past there was no kit frame....there was no kit transmission. In 2005 things changed. There was an easy to use kit frame and drive train, there was AndyMark, and most importantly there were way more extremely competitive teams. The level of game play has risen incredibly. You may be saying so what if the game play increases. Well how much more excited about robotics are students that have a working and not only working, but kick ... robot? When the kids are more excited that means more retention of new FIRSTers and growth amongst teams. Whether people in FIRST want to admit it or not, a team's success and growth depends on the performance of the team. To wrap things up. It seems like there is strong division as to whether vendor products are good or bad for FIRST. I think that question is answered differently by every team, but I think it is important all teams have an avenue to be competitive.

Okay, off my soap box and back on topic.

It sounds like Outback is taking a big hit here. Let me add some fuel to the fire. What if Outback just makes the assembly and leaves it up to teams to get their own belts. The belts from Brecoflex still have a 2-3 week lead time. With that said it's a shame to see Outback, who's trying to give teams an excellent choice for drivetrain, being severely scrutinized. Let's show this company some GP for what they are trying to bring to the table rather then possibly scaring them away from offering any products for FRC teams.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to do my post justice. Good Luck to everyone in the upcoming season!

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other err
 

I do not intend to scrutinize this group moreso than any other and I certainly am not trying to make it so they cannot make their product available to teams. They do, however, represent the catalyst that made me consider some of the issues mentioned above and I think it's possible to discuss those circumstances without specifically tailoring the responses and interpretation to the product these guys are intending to offer.

I've been asked severaly times if I'd consider selling some of the things 488 has worked on to other teams in the Pacific Northwest. I couldn't possibly meet the demand of 300 teams across the country ordering a set of omniwheels (which use rollers from AndyMark, by the way), but would have little trouble building ten or twenty sets for teams in my region. If don't advertise the sale of this product outside the region, my expectation would be that I will not receive orders from more than the number of teams in this area. Is that a fair way of determining interest for the purposes of stocking product?

I'd love to make a little money on the side by providing design advice or finished products to a small number of teams, but I don't see that I can do it with the existing rules. It seems there needs to be some minimum production run criteria or something for consideration as a VENDOR, but it's also impractical to sell a product with the associated caveat that its use will be illegal unless you can guarantee nine other orders or something similar.

I was speaking with Cory about some of this last night and we were curious -- is it ever possible to get Brecoflex belts shipped in fewer than five days?

There are a lot of questions and circumstances that don't need to be answered -- I'm not carrying a torch and a pitchfork here -- but it would serve the community well if they were explored, answered and examined with a bit more depth.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

How do you figure someone is going to buy an entire robot?

The maximum price for a single component is $400. The max spending limit for the robot is $3500. I don't see any reason to believe anyone would fabricate something like an arm that changes year to year. It would simply be too impractical. It would have to be redesigned to fit each game. With that design and machine time, it certainly wouldn't be profitable for someone to sell one for $400 ea.

I doubt we'll see anything more than the current style products from AndyMark, and Outback, if they get off the ground. So far as we know (and for the last decade+) robots have always needed to drive. Since we'd continue to expect robots need to drive, there will always be a market for a certain subset of drive systems, like the ones AndyMark is selling.

The idea of someone buying their entire robot prefabricated, in pieces, from a FIRST specific vendor is so implausible that I wouldn't even give it a second thought.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

I don't think we have to worry about mail-order robots.

Consider the kit-bot.

If you build it the exact same way IFI gives it to you there is no advantage. If you want to use the kit-bot successfully you have to add something: smaller wheels, waffle tread, shifting transmissions...

The same is true for these treads. Once they begin being sold it will be foolish to rely on them to win a match. Teams will have to focus on the scoring part of their robot. As a result, teams will be able to develop better manipulators. This will lead to more competitive robots.



I think companies like Outback and Andy Mark are moving FIRST in the right direction. In the global world companies rely on each other for parts. There isn't ONE big company that builds PC's. There are a lot of little companies that sell their products to larger companies that assemble the final product. One company makes the chips, another makes wires, another cases, disk-drives, keyboards, speakers, monitors... Its ridiculous for one company to design and manufacture every part.

If we really want to build our robots from scratch, its time we got outside and started digging for aluminum ;)

As for vendor status. I don't think we can settle this until we see next year's official rules. Until then, its just our opinions.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other err
 

Thanks for your thoughts. I want to emphasize that the modified transmissions will be available singly, but that the belt standardization is an effort to maximize the quality of the integrated system while reducing the lead time and easing the process for teams and for Breco-Flex.

Traditionally, they've had to do from 3 to 7 track runs for FIRST teams, and the ordering has been a madhouse. Last year, 753 could only get belts which were a bit longer than we wanted and had to modify our design, and the belts didn't arrive until an entire month into the season. Other teams ended up tearing belts from loose mounting or building elaborate and breakage-prone tensioners.

This time, we should be able to deliver a single, standardized size, so teams can get replacement belts if one breaks and so the system can work and work well without tensioners.

Outback has no problem producing components at top speed; they have machines that can spit out flawless bogey wheels like gumdrops, completely automatically. That's what they do. But integrating third-party components like the tracks, which are completely legal for other applications in FIRST, causes delay.

Ari.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

One solution I could see for this whole is it a legal FIRST part from a legal FIRST vendor issue would be for Outback (or whoever) to work out a deal with one of the existing FIRST legal vendors that market to the whole hobby robotics market. There are many existing vendors that serve the hobby robotics market but the one that comes to mind is Robot Marketplace. It would seem to me that a reliable, cost effective, off the shelf, standard tread system and gearbox would be popular even outside the FIRST robotics world. If it is legal for FIRST teams to buy BattleTread or Colson wheels from Robot Marketplace then why not an off the shelf tank tread assembly (assuming it meets the cost limitations)? I feel the issue is more with a team and a machine shop trying to market a specific product to a limited number of teams. Companies like AndyMark and Banebots market products for robotics not specifically FIRST robotics.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

This post reminds us that any point on rules we may make here runs the risk of becoming moot in less than a month with the 2007 kickoff. That said, and since all we have as precedence are the 2006 rules, I’d like to point out the following:

Clearly the ’06 rule does not consider components or mechanisms supplied by a team source to be Consumer Off The Shelf. There’s a very good reason for the exclusion. I hope we do not see the COTS definition change in that regard.

If a team were allowed to manufacture COTS components for sale to other teams, they would naturally be expected to build an inventory during the off-season. All the other teams who wished to buy them would have to place an order and wait for shipment. The manufacturing team, on the other hand, would have instant access, which would give them a considerable advantage in the six-week build period. More yet, the component that they would have had to reproduce each year could be reused because of its COTS status, which again would save a bunch of build time. Even if they never sold a single one, they could save days or weeks each year. Worse yet (and I’m not even remotely suggesting that anyone would do so, only that they could) would be that the manufacturing team could put the price of the component high enough to decrease demand, which, as anyone who’s taken Economics-101 knows, would have the same effect as limiting supply.

So, even though FIRST should encourage creating resources for "under served" teams, they should continue to guard against heading down a slippery slope.

Re: "VENDORs", reasonable delays in shipping due to out of stock items, and other errata
 

Time for a group hug ... or a lobotomy. :)

Today is December 8. Kickoff is almost here. For all we know, we're getting a kit filled with mailboxes, clowns, packing foam, and the only approved vendor could be nick.com.

While some of this discussion is worthy on some levels, most of it makes my head hurt. Just like every year, we will get our game and we will all do our best to follow the rules as given. Each team will place different "value" on "aftermarket purchases" vs. building from scratch. Approved vendors need to be defined somehow, let's not get picky at the microscopic level.

Might I suggest that these rules could really exist to protect teams from not getting parts in time to finish a robot? To make sure that teams have as equal an opportunity as possible? Does it matter if something arrives in six days instead of five? Maybe the rules are there to help our sanity and allow us to get some sleep during build season? What if they aren't there for us to scrutinize so closely people's heads and feelings hurt?

If you took the collective energy and effort that was spent crafting these posts and used it instead for what our founders want us to do with our time, I bet we'd have more teams and volunteers in all of our programs right now.

Now, go inspire and recognize.
Namaste.