Proposed shipping schedule

[archiver]

Posted by Jim Morin.

Engineer on team #175, Buzz, from Enrico Fermi High School.

Posted on 12/23/99 12:44 PM MST



I recently wrote Dave Brown at FIRST to present my arguments against the proposed shipping schedule.
I'd like to get Delphi's opinion and possible support in getting FIRST to re-think their shipping plans.

The proposed plan to have everybody ship robots without any opportunity to make repairs is wrong.
The 'fairness' issue came about because the teams in the last regional must ship directly from the
contest in order to make it to the nationals on time. Since those teams can't make repairs FIRST thinks
(to be fair) that nobody should be able to make repairs. I fear a major log jam will result at the nationals
with many teams needing to make repairs and overloading the machine shop. I'm on one of those teams
that competes at a last regional and if I need to make a repair at the nationals I don't want to be delayed
by a team that could have made his repair a month earlier. If FIRST wants to be fair to me then let
everybody make repairs before shipping as we normally do and save the resources for the teams that
have no choice. In every contest that we've been to the opening day is a fury of repair activity and thats
after three days of repair time that we've normally had. What do you think Florida will be like this year.
To keep things running as smoothly as they have in past years, don't force teams to have to ship a
damaged robot when there is time up front to fix them. At last count there's 378 teams. The last regionals
will account for maybe the 78, so 300 teams are penalized which doesn't seem very 'fair' to me. 378 teams
also means about 100 new rookie teams. Without those 3 days after a regional many of those rookies
just won't have the time necessary to fix their problems, and we all know to well that it takes more than
the couple of hours we'll have on Thursday morning. I asked FIRST to re-think their fairness logic and don't
ship damaged robots.

I think most teams have all they can do to just make the first ship date with little or no running time. The
few days after a regional are the most valuable days we have; that's when we make repairs, modify
software, and get much needed practice time. I think the nationals could degrade to just a mediocre event
if these critical days are taken away from us.

This year there is a schedule problem and some teams will get hurt by it and that's too bad, but don't
penalize the majority. In response to an earlier memo to Lori she said that it's too late to fix the situation.
Seems to me that there is plenty of time to fix this. Just say 'we reconsidered the shipping plans and it's
business as usual and sorry to those last regional teams, and we'll do a better job next year with the
events scheduling.

Lastly as a footnote, we spend in the order of $50k annually on this program, not to mention the often
resented hours any from our families. With poor regional sites such as the Meadows in Hartford and now
this years shipping plans, it's no wonder why great teams like Plymouth decided to drop out.

I wrote to the Delphi team because I feel that they're well respected by FIRST and that there opinions
would be taken seriously. If you feel I have valid concerns, please write Dave Brown at FIRST.
We can change this. Please help get the word through your extensive web page and teams contacts.
Also please contact me at my email 'james.morin@hs.utc.com'

Thank you - Jim Morin from the BUZZ team 175