Why does the BOM exist?

FIRST General Forum
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To be clear, this isn’t a witty retort with a clickbait title, it’s a genuine question. We’ve heard rumored and inferred all sorts of ideas as to why this document exists in current form, of which I’ve found the answers inadequate, so let’s break it down.

Hypothesis: The Bill of Materials exists as a way for FIRST to gague, long-term, the costs of robots and how that effects teams at different levels of competition?

Retort: The inspectors at individual events rarely look at the Bill of Materials for more than a few seconds, and often it’s never reported in any meaningful way up the chain of command. Additionally, so many things are exempted from the Bill of Materials that it’d hardly be a true cost-evaluation method.

So, that’s out of the way. What else could it be?

Hypothesis: The Bill of Materials is being used as a measure to enforce a price cap on the competition, to ensure that the top teams can’t out-buy the less fortunate?

Retort: While the $500 per-item and $5000 overall limit does cause this effect to an extent, the Bill of Materials, especially via the item covering bulk discounts only applying to teams that actually buy in bulk, further hedging the ability of top teams to buy more room on their BOM.

So it’s only tangentially a cost-limit for teams, isn’t used to chart the institutional weight of cost to effect, it leaves loopholes for teams of finanical stability already. In conclusion, I propose getting rid of the BOM in current form and replacing it with one of the following:

  • Full BOM (ignoring only $5 or less exemption for the sake of sanity), published in the Team Portal, weighing severely for technical awards, released at end of season.
  • No BOM, overall item and budget items enforced, RI / LRI still can fail a team for inspection if they cannot prove it meets these criteria.

My concern, and my question, is whether having the BOM actually is inspirational, or useful, in current form? If that’s not the metric FIRST is using to gauge it’s value for existence, what is? And if no such metric exists, can we know why it continues to exist then?

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I’ve really liked the idea of taking the BOM out of the inspection process and adding it to the criteria for judged engineering awards. That allows teams that want to prioritize their tracking/documentation to continue to benefit from the practice, while not burdening/confusing others.

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If the first choice is optional, then neither of these helps address the $500/$5000 limits. In theory, the $500 limit could be enforced the same way pneumatic pressure ratings for components are enforced - if in question, the team has to provide documentation. But I don’t realistically see doing that for the $5000 overall limit. I wouldn’t want to have to create a BOM after getting to an event just because someone looked at my robot and said “how much did that cost?” First, the BOM wouldn’t be terribly accurate. Second, it would be a significant time-sink at competition waiting to pass inspection. It’s better to set that expectation up front and have every team come prepared for it, in my opinion.

Personally, I would love to see a full BOM prepared, but lets be honest - that’s beyond many team’s current capabilities, and I wouldn’t want to sit there in inspection counting bolts to see if it’s accurate or not. I’d be in favor of having a minimum requirement* for inspection purposes, and a full BOM related to one or more awards.

*minimum requirement: all individual cots components (including KoP) greater than $100. Ignore items like sheet metal and tubing. Have some reasonable limit that, when combined with the normal usage of items like sheet metal and tubing, along with the current normal KoP usage amounts, is in the same ballpark as the current limit.

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I have to agree here too. Top tier teams do have ways of getting around BOM, as a result of which they can build better robots. So adding what you suggest might be a reasonable choice.

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As someone who works in an engineering environment, the BOM is a very important document especially when doing a ‘design to cost’ project. It’s also a good way to look for supplier optimizations and is valuable when doing the cost-reduction phase of product development.

In short, it’s part of the engineering process and since we’re building engineers here, there’s some value in introducing it.

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I’m done.

Like 100% done.

If ANYONE thinks that FRC is meant to be equal, fair, or a level playing field… it isn’t and no one in New Hampshire gives a flying platypus… here’s your proof:

https://frc-qa.firstinspires.org/qa/113

They owned it. If a team can buy something for less than $500 in bulk then screw anyone who can’t.

The BOM does not level the playing field and if anyone at HQ claims it does throw this at them please. This is now so asymmetric as to be absurd and runs counter to any mission claimed.

This is absurdity. I’m done.

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That’s why I proposed two ends of the same spectrum. I’ve been in engineering environments to do just that, but FRC does not nearly use the concept in a way that’s useful or reflective of that process, and saying the two are comparable is saying that a parent trying to search on Amazon for a kid’s push car is the same as pricing out a sports car.

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We introduce a lot of concepts that are reminiscent of real-world engineering without really implementing them fully or accurately. I don’t think it’s tenable to create a realistic product development scenario and expect it to be engaging or inspiring to kids. Just because we don’t give concepts a full treatment, doesn’t mean we should just leave them out entirely.

Just my opinion.

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Are we building engineers or inspiring people to pursue engineering?

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You might want to look somewhere in the middle. That’s usually where the answer lies.

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Also I know very very few teams where the students actually do the BOM because it’s not fun, it’s not exciting, it’s definitely NOT inspirational. It’s a giant waste of time that is unenforceable.

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Let’s be real: the BOM/CAW doesn’t add value to this program.

Nearly every team ignores it until the last possible second. I’m willing to bet that at least 90%+ are created the night before or on the bus on the morning of their first competition.

And the overall $5k limit has its own problems, largely stemming from the fact that your robot budget wildly fluctuates depending on your luck in FIRST Choice, but also from the fact that it isn’t really any kind of barrier at the moment. There are so many loopholes that nearly any viable robot a team could build at the moment would be legal.

I would be a massive fan of eliminating the BOM/CAW and overall $5k limit, but keeping the “no single component can cost more than USD $500” rule. To make inspection easier, have teams come with pricing documentation/receipts for all single components that cost between $250 and $500 to confirm legality. E.g. anything that might be questioned as potentially costing more than USD $500.

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As someone who works in a procurement / supply chain organization, I disagree.

We don’t have students account for shipping costs in the BOM, or assess supplier risk, supplier diversity, or logistics of shipping/warehousing. We don’t ask multiple vendors to compete for bids for our teams’ business, either. We don’t even do accounting exercises for depreciating our team assets (workshop space, tools, parts, etc.) or factor in marginal costs of running machines to produce parts or labor costs associated with production.

Do we really want to argue that completing the FRC BOM or CAW prepares our students for “real-world” engineering projects? It’s not even close.

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Preparing pointless documentation is indeed a big part of the engineering world.

And, did you get the new TPS report form?

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The other 10% are created after the inspector realizes the team doesn’t have a BOM.

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Are you really trying to argue that everything we do needs to be an accurate reproduction of a real engineering environment? Because then you and I need to have a conversation about “embedded firmware development”.

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No, I’m not suggesting that everything (or anything) our students are asked to do is a realistic representation of corporate engineering processes. However, if the only reason a process in FRC exists is to mimic the real-life counterpart, then I’m pretty firmly in the camp that we shouldn’t be doing it.

Marshall’s post nicely sums up why the BOM process clearly isn’t a mechanism for leveling the playing field, so what else could it be for?

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We’re building engineers?

Man i feel like such a failure that for the last 14 years i’ve created more non-engineers from my teams than engineers…

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alright. Bad wording choice on my part. Mea Culpa.