The Lack of Spares ... Good or Bad

[artdutra04]

While the concepts of constricting the design constraints is a good idea, since it can lead to a better end product (since it requires a lot more thought in the process), not having spares is a bad idea.

What if a computer company like Dell or Apple or Lenovo told their engineers that there would never be any way proclaim a spare battery or hard drive for the laptop they were designing? Even though they might be exceedingly careful with their design, I guarantee you that there will be a small percentage of batteries or hard drives which would fail prematurely, due to any number of reasons which might be beyond the engineer's control.

Stuff fails in the real world, and if you do not design accordingly you won't succeed.

[AdamHeard]

I've worked at Northrop Grumman (a major aerospace company) for several years. From what I've seen there, they would never use a product or part to which no spare or replacement was available.

[lynca]

Originally Posted by Natchez

The funniest thing that I've heard on this subject is from the Fisher-Price service center after endless explanations of how the FP motor was being used on a FIRST robot, "I don't care what toy you have!

That's really strange how Fisher Price Service Center will not give replacements !
FIRST should just get a large quantity of these motors like they do every year and sell spares through IFI.

[MiniNerd24]

Actually I would have chosen both. Becuase it would be good to keep people from interchanging multiple times during play.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Given that the construction rules, fix-it windows, and carry in weight limits all seem to greatly encourage making large amounts of spares well ahead of time, I think the GDC/FIRST must be on the side of spares being a good thing. As many others in the thread have noted, no one in the real world would design a machine for which a spare part could not be purchased or at least machined. Yes, there are a few exception like the mirror for the Hubble and other things in that vein, but they're really rather rare.

I don't really buy the argument that this lack of spares is a good extra design constraint. There are plenty of very serious rather difficult design constraint already placed upon the teams. Adding the extra design constraint of not screwing up ever while making the part, plus it'd better work right every time including the first, or else you'd better have safety features that'd better work right every time including the first.... It seems perverse. Mostly I think it's a bad thing because it's primarily going to dissuade teams from using the FPs or any other easily mangled parts that are highly difficult to replace, which means that money, effort, and good will to get the motors in the KoP are all wasted. I can't really blame teams for not using them, though, it's a pretty smart engineering decision.

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by lynca

FIRST should just get a large quantity of these motors like they do every year and sell spares through IFI.

You're in luck! According to the update that just came out, that's exactly what they're going to do.