Since we suddenly have a bit of extra time on our hands, one of the things our team decided we’d like to focus on is improving our shop and pit organization.
This year (as well as past years) our organization of parts coming in to the shop has been poor (on a good day) to abysmal. We’ve lost hours looking for parts that have been lost, and money in replacing these same parts when they couldn’t be found. In addition the organization of our tools leaves much to be desired. Additionally, we don’t have our own trailer, so have to make due with what UHAUL has available for transportation (typically we’ve been using a 5x8 Uhaul without issue)
From a tool organization perspective, we’re investigating some type of foam inserts for our toolboxes such that things don’t get displaced as badly during transport, as well as making it obvious both where tools should be stored as well as when tools are not where they are intended to be. Does anyone have any suggestions for foam inserts or organizers that they’ve used successfully?
For parts we are looking into some sort of stacking small-parts organization solution. For large events we’d likely store these boxes in drawers in a rolling toolbox, but could also be transported separately for smaller events where we didn’t want to bring our full pit setup. Does anyone have recommendations of a system which has held up for them over the years? We’d been looking at the Milwakee packout solution, but its a significant investment. If you’re using these type of solutions how many boxes do you have and what is contained in them?
Additionally, I’m curious how teams handle parts intake. One of the biggest issues we seem to have is how to handle the “unique” parts that are needed each year for our robots. We had a lot of these type of parts this year (CF springs, standoffs, strange bolts) that seemed to go missing when needed most.
Overall, I’m just curious how other teams have been handling their organization issues over the years to see what our team can successfully adopt to not waste as much time in the pit and shop.
Thanks.