My team was thinking about over the summer inventorying our shop and maintaining it throughout the build season.
How do you guys approach something like this, and what type of software do you guys use?
I find excel to be enough. We create a spreadsheet of what we ought to have going into the build season in August or September, then do an inventory of those items in October or November, and order the difference.
HAHHAHAHAHAHHAA
we have a giant pile and freshmen.
If you are going to inventory your shop, which I think is a great idea, I also recommend that you include a column in your spreadsheet for who owns that asset. In other words, is it a team–owned item, or was it lent to the team by a mentor who expects to get it back when they leave the team, or is it owned by a sponsor who has loaned it to the team? If/when an item is purchased or donated to the team, it’s a good idea to include that information in your inventory spreadsheet.
OH-SO-GLAD we don’t have that issue. The only things loaned to the team are a few tools, and those by our mentors, who know to write (or etch) both a name and a team number on them, in case they end up at a competition. The only item I can think of that has been borrowed longer than six months is my tripod roller stand that I don’t really care about.
Our (university) shop uses Grainger. but I could see where a barcode system + scanner could help
Our fresh have been too busy this year. Never had any petty tasks to give to them. My freshman year consisted of Deburring parts and bumper work 
We have a really complicated method…
We dont
Works for us too!
But not exactly “piles,” though; There are multiple bins (totes), all of them labeled. One is labeled “Plastic Scraps.” That’s where you will find our electric extension cords and power strips etc. Another is labeled “Cups and Plates.” That one has spare aluminum sheet metal parts for the current robot.
etc
In your shop, our head mentor makes EVERYONE sort through hardware because he says that everyone needs to be able to get screws…We also have all the freshman sort everything else and put it into an excel sheet!
For the competition, we bring the FRC totes (from KOP) and on the inside cover of the totes we have a packing list so we know what should be in every tote.
There’s a difference between an inventory of consumables & components, and an inventory of tools and equipment. The latter is (relatively) static and the former dynamic as well as arguably more useful.
An inventory of tools & equipment is good for insurance and keeping track of valuables, but during build season it’s not common to wonder “gee, do we have a band saw in stock?”
But how many times do we hear “We need to place an urgent order for <something>” and it turns out we have a few of them on the shelf. Rummaging through a dozen crates marked “misc” is not an inventory system, and for teams on a budget buying ore of what you already have isn’t cost-efficient.
Any inventory system has to be used to be effective. I use a type of Cardex system (google it) which helps me:
- Know what I have
- Know where it is
- Know when (if) I need to order more
One day the robot team will adopt it as well.
There are two keys to making this work:
- Everything is labeled, so anyone can tell what its name is
- Using the system is strictly enforced: Nobody takes anything without recording it.
For labels, you can label the bin, or put a simple tag on each item. For many similar items, you can be a little lazy and lump all or most of them together (bearings) but this has a way of biting you back. An inexpensive paper/string tag is a good item, you can write its name, date received and cost (that CAW doesn’t fill itself out), and make a new card at the same time.
Using paper cards might seem quaint, but we sent men to the moon with such a system. The alternative is a common database so everyone has access, but all you are doing it creating a cardex system on a computer. It is quite rare for my paper cards to crash, and access to the card box is fairly simple.
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