Al's Annual Inspection Thread 2015

[bachster]

Originally Posted by rich2202

BOM Comment:

KOP items do not have to be listed.

It would be nice if certain KOP items had to be listed, like motors. The reason is: They are limited by part number, and quantity. By explicitly listing them, it is easier to confirm the part number.

Agreed. I wish FIRST put a little more emphasis on the BOM, not even from a cost perspective but just from a real world perspective and emphasizing the importance of being accurate and specific. I've started using the BOM as a build-season-long job for rookies on the build team, to get them to learn what all the components are and where they come from, ideally real-time as they are added to the robot. I conveniently didn't tell them about this, and I'm not sure they've read the BOM rules closely enough to realize it themselves. I'd like our BOM to reflect our whole robot.

It would also be nice from an inspection perspective to have all the KOP items listed, especially since the definition of KOP includes any year's checklist, FIRSTChoice, and PDV items. A team could claim pretty much anything falls under one of those categories and I'd be hard pressed to disprove it. I'd like to see teams have to call out what it is and where it's from, even if that is "2002 KOP" or "2013 FIRSTChoice" and the cost is $0.