Organizing robotics room

[Zealii]

The room where my team stores all of our stuff is a black hole, to put it lightly. We have been avoiding it but we can no longer find what we need without a search party. I fear that if we don't do a good enough job, the room will end up like it is now in a few months. How did your team organize their work room and how do you keep it organized?

[EricH]

Grab a bunch of bins, similar to the KOP bins in size. Label each bin for what it's supposed to contain. Go into the closet, and as you haul items out put them in the right bin. Put the bins back into the closet. Now the search party only has to find the right bin and dig through that, which is much less intimidating.

Oh, and do the same with tools and a toolbox drawers. For some reason, it helps to not mix tools and robot parts in storage.

[Allison K]

This isn't our comprehensive system, but here's a run down.

- Two cabinets are designated for key parts, namely the "In Progress" cabinet and the "Complete Parts" cabinet. These are fairly self explanatory. Any complete part that isn't yet on the robot goes in the complete parts cabinet, any part in progress at the end of a meeting goes in the in progress cabinet. Both cabinets are organized by one subsystem per shelf.
- Any part that fits on a cafeteria tray is stored on a cafeteria tray in the aforementioned cabinets. The name of the person working on that tray and any relevant drawings or instructions are also stored on the tray.
- Most work that can fit on the trays in done on the trays. The general rule is that there should never ever be loose parts on a table or floor. Sometimes a part takes up two trays. Parts that get finished get taken off the tray and put in the complete parts cabinet on the appropriate shelf. Parts that don't get finished get put into the in progress cabinet on the tray such that whomever was working can just take the whole tray and get back to work at the start of the next meeting.
- We also use muffin tins for assembling gearboxes or other components with lots of small parts. Same storage rules as the trays.
- Fasteners are standardized such that we minimize the number of tools necessary, and we have about eight sets of the tools for our standard fasteners so that multiple students can work at once and we don't worry about losing the one wrench we need.
- Everything else is organized into categories - Tools, COTS, Hardware & Supplies, Stock, and Machines are the major categories. There's also office supplies, cleaning supplies, kitchen supplies, work supplies, miscellaneous equipment, scraps, team swag, project management center, personal belonging, unsorted, and junk.
- Unsorted and Junk categories are handy to keep everything else neat. Unsorted is one designated cart to put things if you don't know where they go. When too many things end up in unsorted we do a group clean up. Junk is the things that we just can't bring ourselves to part with because we might need them someday, even though we probably never will. Junk gets hidden away in a corner and nobody is allowed to use junk without permission (or occasional prototyping).
- Personal Belongings is a designated space for coats, backpacks, musical instruments, etc. to keep them out of the way of our work area.
- Hardware and Supplies are all sorted in Stanley Sortmaster Organizers. We have one for each size faster, one for hex hardware, various others.
- Everybody helps clean every night. Machine area gets swept and vacuumed, tables get wiped down, in progress trays get put in the appropriate cabinet, and everything else is either put away (or in unsorted if we're in a hurry).

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by EricH

Grab a bunch of bins, similar to the KOP bins in size. Label each bin for what it's supposed to contain. Go into the closet, and as you haul items out put them in the right bin. Put the bins back into the closet. Now the search party only has to find the right bin and dig through that, which is much less intimidating...

Absolutely this.

The trick becomes making sure that every box is still accessible to put things back in when you're done with them. That was the problem my team had and people would get lazy and just throw stuff on top of the boxes rather than digging out the box the item belonged in.