FIRST Vendor Rules discussion

[Joe Ross]

Lets discuss this here, rather then in the announcement thread

Greetings Teams:

As a heads up for FRC teams in the 2005 FRC Competition season, 2005 FRC teams will be solicited to buy products from vendors for use in the FRC team's robot. A vendor's product could be a duplicate of a part and/or component that FIRST has supplied in that year's Kit of Parts. In addition, FRC teams need to be cautious and cognizant of the fact that the rules do change every year and parts that were legal in previous years may not be legal in following years.

In light of the upcoming 2005 FRC Competition season, FIRST is providing the following vendor qualification criteria to be utilized by 2005 FRC teams to assist them in deciding whether to procure a particular vendor's product for use on their robot (these criteria can also be found in the 2005 Robotics Competition Manual, Section 5.2 Definitions, after it has been released following the 2005 FRC Kickoff, Saturday, January 8, 2005):

VENDOR - A legitimate business source for Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) items that, as a minimum, satisfies the following criteria:

The VENDOR must have a Federal Tax Identification number.
The Federal Tax Identification number establishes the VENDOR as a legal business entity with the IRS, and validates their status as a legitimate business.
The VENDOR must be able to ship their product within five (5) business days of receiving a valid purchase request.
The FIRST Robotics Competition build season is only six weeks long, so the VENDOR must be able to get their product to a team in a timely manner.
Note that this criterion may not apply to custom-built items from a source that is both a VENDOR and a fabricator. For example, a VENDOR may sell flexible belting that the team wishes to procure to use as treads on their drive system. The VENDOR cuts the belting to a custom length from standard shelf stock that is typically available, welds it into a loop to make the tread, and ships it to the team. The fabrication of the tread takes the VENDOR two weeks. This would be considered a FABRICATED ITEM, and the two-week ship time is acceptable. Alternately, the team may decide to fabricate the treads themselves. To satisfy this criterion, the VENDOR would just have to ship a length of belting from shelf stock (i.e. a COTS item) to the team within five (5) business days and leave the welding of the cuts ends to the team.

The VENDOR makes their products available to all FIRST Robotics Competition teams.
VENDORS must not limit supply or make a product available to just a limited number of FIRST Robotics Competition teams.
Ideally, chosen VENDORS should have national distributors.

Example distributors include Home Depot, Lowes, MSC, Radio Shack, and McMaster-Carr. FIRST competition events are not usually near home. When parts fail, local access to replacements is often critical.

Go Teams!