What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I don't understand what side you're advocating. You seem to be trying to say that eliminating bag day would help sustainability, but your arguments do not help me toward that position.



How does not putting the robot in a bag do anything to shipping costs?

How does taking longer to make parts save money over making them with a shorter deadline?

How does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?



Again, how does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?

If a mentor can only come to a fraction of the meetings, how is making the meetings farther apart going to help?

If you're not suggesting fewer meetings total, how does that give anyone more time off?



I suppose there might be some contrived situation where it would be more possible to access a space less frequently, but you've totally broken your argument by suggesting that the time you need it would simultaneously be shorter.



I don't understand this at all, sorry. If you show up less frequently, how can you attend more?

I assume that you want to argue that a student who can only commit to a certain number of meetings per week will make it to more meetings in total if they are spread out over a longer time. I will grant that as a possibility, but it seems more likely to me that a student who does not have robotics as a priority (for whatever reason) under the current system will not make more of a commitment if the build season gets longer.

I made edits to clarify the first two so I'll spend some time on 1.3. See my last. I'll add to 1.1 too.

1.1,
Longer time to work means parts don't need to get to you as fast so one of two things happens. A. you ship parts as fast as possible anyway and get done sooner or B. you can now afford to ship things slower and thus cheaper without worrying about the deadline as much.

on 1.3,
If you have a small leadership team and human resources are split between supporting the build effort and more of the work that gets done to maintain a successful program and all the planning for events etc, etc, then if you are able to focus on the build it self less often during the span of a week then you would have more time in that week for other things. Assuming that you spend roughly the same total hrs working on the robot between kickoff and competition as you did between kickoff and Feb X.


On 2

Again if you choose to work roughly the same #of hrs you have more days per week that you won't need physically be at your own program, and more time between meetings to do things like prepare for the next meeting or in the case of 2.1 drive or skype to another team you are working with.

In the case of 2.2,
Say Jim from GE can only spare 2 afternoon week days a week mentoring FRC. Regardless of remote presence options that's all the spare time he has. Lets say this rookie team meets 4 weekdays and a Saturday. That's 30 total team meetings and Jim could do 12 (40%). If the team met 3 weekdays and a Saturday for 8 weeks he made 16 total (50%). More time overall but the mentor also got to guide them through more of the work than before.

2.3,

The problem wouldn't be total work it would be how many different things is this new and likely small mentor base having to juggle at the same time. Burnout is burnout. You need more power to do x amount in 1 unit time than x amount in 2 unit time. I can give a more specific anecdote/example if you want.

3. Say management of X property would rather you end your meetings at 7 but you usually end at 8 on weekdays. Say in six weeks you met 3 weekdays from 5-8 and you can push it up because school. That's 54 hrs of weekdays in 6 weeks. If you have 8 weeks with the same number of weekday meetings you would have 48hrs(89%) as opposed to just 36hrs (67%). Now you have less of a deficit to make up by adding meeting days or adding weekend time (by ~22%). If management of X property didn't care than it wouldn't affect you and would be a wash.

4. Similar to 2.2-3,

If a team meets more often than a student is able to show up they can be left behind or not be able to join. If meetings were less frequent but you still had just as many they would be able to attend a higher percentage of said meetings.