I was working with 469 this year, and they have a couple practices that are worth sharing:
#1: system Checks in the pits. This is a recommended set of checks for each subsystem to know that the robot is ready for its next match. I highly recommend making a set of checks and refining the list as your season continues.
#2: During build, they ahve a really cool system. The students design every part in CAD that must be fabricated. They then make a drawing for each part, and have a part number scheme that starts with 3 letters that represent the subsystem. IE Arm parts are: ARM001, ARM002.... Stacker parts were: STK001, STK002.... A drawing goes out with each student fabricating the part. They then use 4 colors of stickered dots to code each part. One for in process comp bot & 1 for in process practice. One for Approved comp bot, one for approved practice bot. As soon as the rough stock is cut for a component, it is labeled with the "in-process" sticker which has its PN on it (IE ARM001-yellow). This sticker stays on until the part is "complete" and it is reviewed by the student design lead who approves it by removing the in process, and replacing it with an approved sticker (IE ARM001-yellow).
They keep all the fab parts on a set of shelves with a label for each level corresponding to a subsystem.
They also keep a Fabrication BOM that has all the parts organized by subsystem, and the same color code with a 5th color for not started. They added a column for "milling required" in order to help prioritize/schedule parts through the mill which was one of the limited resources this year.
The Fabrication BOM was a great tool for helping the build coordinator(mentor) know what was ready and set daily priorities as well as guage readiness to plan and add shop hours as needed.
This was my first year dealing with such a slick system (33 utilized a different system that worked well, but differently when I was there). A key component was the team was pretty disciplined to utilize it. This supported a very fast assembly schedule which allowed for some additional design time compared to other teams I have worked with. It also ensured that practice robot was very very similar to competition robot. This allowed for tweaks to be tested on practice and then later implemented on comp bot during the season.
One drawback with this system was practice robot was not "done" (or more appropriately labeled "useful") nearly as early in the build season as some other teams I have talked to. I don't think practice robot was terribly useful until the last couple days of build vs. some teams have a useful "practice" robot around week 4.
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"Formal Quality" is a pretty broad topic. At my work, it encompasses a lot of different areas, and items. Occasionally, it can be adversarial, though that is often due to "design expectation" not meeting design need. This can be especially true in a "protoype" environment.
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To the original thread starter, some recommended reading is:
Checklist Manifesto. How to get things right.
Atwul Gwande was part of the World Health Organization responsible for the Surgery Checklist. The results of utilizing a checklist were amazing:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119
From the above link:
"Use of the WHO Surgery Checklist reduced the rate of deaths and surgical complications by more than one-third across all eight pilot hospitals. The rate of major inpatient complications dropped from 11% to 7%, and the inpatient death rate following major operations fell from 1.5% to 0.8%."
As a reminder, these are some of the most educated people in the world conducting these procedures, and reduction of in-hospital deaths between 30-50%
Because it is a small number, you might say, so what. There are a lot of oeprations in the world. Also from the link:
"Why is the Checklist important?
Surgery can be a life-saving or life-changing intervention in many conditions and the provision of surgical services is being increasingly recognized as a significant public health issue. A modeling study estimated that
234 million operations are carried out every year across the world. This translates to one operation for every 25 people and is more than the number of children born worldwide each year.
An estimation of the global volume of surgery: a modelling strategy based on available data
Lancet 2008
However, despite the positive impact the provision of surgical services can have on a population’s health, surgery itself carries risk.
Current estimates of morbidity and mortality following surgery indicate that over 7 million people worldwide will suffer complications following surgery. One million of these people will die as a result. Around half of these complications are potentially preventable, so using the Checklist to improve the safety of surgery will save many thousands of lives each year."
Now, using the checklist and associated practices could/should in theory save: between 300,000 to 500,000 people per year! To put that into context. I believe there were around 40,000 people at the FIRST World Championship and Festival. Imagine saving 8X to 12X the number of participants... every year.
How does this apply to robotics?
A lot of robots end up having issues during matches that keep them from working. I am not sure the exact ratio, but I would guess somewhere around 10% or about 1 issue every other match. This seems a bit low, as I know a lot of very good teams tend to have at least 1 issue per event (with a 12 match qual schedule). Several of the Greats are able to keep a clean schedule at most events, but that is a delta from "really good" to "Great". Often 1 qual match victory can be the difference between #1 and #4/5 seed.
So, if you can reduce system failures from 3 per season to say 1 or 2... you may have a dramatically better season.