What COTS parts would you like to see?

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by roboruler

That is very difficult for suppliers, it is almost a gamble, as they have to buy or fabricate parts in advance, and if they are not useful for a particular season then that is a huge burden on them. A way around it is to get certain suppliers like Andymark and Vex in the loop in terms of the season so they can plan ahead, but it is really not ideal at all.

Originally Posted by messer5740

What about the AndyMark tank treads? That must have been the best gamble they ever had for they only came out about a month prior to kickoff. I do feel that suppliers should be in the loop so they can prepare their inventory for the influx of purchasing specific parts.

Three key distributors--AndyMark, VEX, and REV--were given a few high-level details about the game in September and October.

Originally Posted by Frank

They were given general information such as that the robots would be driving over obstacles, climbing, and throwing game objects. All distributors made their own decisions about stocking levels and what components they should stock. As an example, while we told distributors that robots would be climbing obstacles, we did not tell them what specific components we thought would be useful in addressing that challenge. Each made their own business decisions. In some individual cases distributors were given more detailed information out of necessity. For example, as AndyMark had agreed to make the game objects available to teams, they knew about, and stocked, boulders ahead of time. Specific details like this were on a 'need to know' basis, if they didn't need to know, they didn't get to know.