Quote:
Originally Posted by hrench
I design trucks and when we ship the sales group their first demo trucks, we have to stop writing change orders on that model. We'll plan upgrades and improvements, but the body panels, the interior panels, the COTS things need to be ordered. So no upgrades are allowed.
I've designed radios, elevators, train parts, pumps, many other things. This is how it's worked for me every time. If you have a functional, safe design, even if it can be improved, it has to go into production at some point. You release the prints and they order the first production-run worth...sometimes hundreds of parts.
This is part of the real world of engineering. Every design can be improved after it's first conceived and tried, but mostly you'll be doing that after production has started and orders are being fulfilled. Many times that doesn't even happen--you have new projects by then...what was good enough to release is good enough to sell.
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Fair points.
What you're leaving out is that these improvements are in fact noted, designed for, and the next version update (for a car, the next model year), they will be implemented. The only reason why they aren't implemented immediately is because the design has to go through rigorous testing in house and by third parties to ensure user safety, and they need to make thousands of identical parts to ensure quality. I see no such safety testing requirements in FIRST. Additionally, no one in FIRST is mass producing their robots, like a company does. Heck, some teams don't even put their designs into a CAD! RARELY if ever will a prototype, an early-off, or even a Test Trial part be 1:1 to production.
Maybe the original Design Engineers aren't involved in this optimization process, but people like myself (Industrial Engineers) certainly are figuring out how to squeeze just 10% more awesomeness out of the object in question. My job is never really over, until we all agree that it is not financially beneficial to make anymore improvements.
AND, much of this optimization is done on the supplier side of things, so the assembly company might not know exactly how many little-bitty changes were made before final parts are shipped for testing. They're not going to hold every suppliers hand; they've got a whole car to design, assemble, and sell.