Hi everyone,

I thought I would start an informational and totally unofficial discussion of the new cost rules. All official answers, add item requests and other correspondence must be submitted through formal channels as outlined in the rules, at SAE.org and on www.fsaeonline.com. However, because we're all working through the new rules together I thought it would be nice to have a more informal discussion as well as update you about the internal progress we have been making on the rules, Cost Tables and Cost Database.

Here we go:

1. Hopefully everyone has been to the SAE website and fund the Cost Tables and Appendices linked to our new dedicated Cost Website, www.fsaeonline.com. If you haven't go see what we have posted so far.

2. We haven't been able to announce the plan for receiving the data or tell you much about the tool we will be providing to the teams to build their costed Bill of Material (cBOM) so far. However, we can now. The system has three parts: A) A MS Access front end for the teams, B) An internet browser based interface for the judges and C) A SQL server back-end running on a hosting service. This allows teams to work offline and synchronize their data whenever they choose. Multiple team members will be able to work at the same time as long as they are careful to divide up the work and not overwrite each others data. It also gives the judges a flexible viewer that doesn't involve downloading software. And finally a program running on the server (probably Matlab) will be going through the data and check for common errors and omissions.

3. The Access front-end Beta release should be out in the middle of December and the full release in early January. That gives even the teams entered into the Virginia event six weeks or more to enter their data. I have previously asked for Beta testers, but have received many requests and have picked the Universities that will be participating. Sorry if your team could not be included, but it should only be a short wait from Beta to the full roll out. We will also have some Excel worksheets up on fsaeonline.com shortly for internal team use.

4. We are also planning to migrate all the electronic submissions to the new website, and will hopefully have that early in the new year as well. Until we post it to SAE.org or fsaeonline.com please continue to submit all materials the normal way through email as specified in the rules and online for your specific event.

Hopefully this helps to fill you in on all the work happening behind the scenes. The new Cost Rules and Tools represents a huge investment in both volunteer hours and monetary spending by SAE -- so we hope that the teams like the direction we're going. There may be some growing pains along the way but eliminating receipts and achieving a Cost Event with minimal subjectivity and a focus on engineering content is the goal for us all.

Questions? Comments? Fire away -- and remember everything published here is unofficial.

Bill Riley

Bill-

I comment on this as an alumni. I'm very glad to see the cost rules are being revamped, as previously I feel they were severely lacking.

I haven't seen much of the new rollout. From previous experience however, the main issue I had with the system was the lack of a "reality check," and not so much how the data was submitted and stored (though standardization is great).

What prevents someone from submitting say.. a very involved billet upright design and claiming it only takes 10 minutes of CNC time? Or just flat out lying about what parts are and aren't on the car?

It was very frustrating knowing that in reality, it cost us about $21,000 to build a fairly simple car. By the cost rules, that price came out to be pretty close (cheaper in some areas, more expensive in others). But seemingly the way to perform the best in that event would be to flat out BS everything. There were certainly vehicles that were MUCH more involved in both CNC and composite manufacturing, and were costed at $13,000. Ridiculous!

I appreciate your concerns with the prior rules. Many people worked very hard on them, but once we were able to identify some areas for improvement and ways to make that happen -- we took action to improve them.

The new rules do away with time altogether. The cost for machined components is now based on measurable parameters, such as the volume of the part being machined and the size of the original stock material. Since we have minimum machining thicknesses there is now a level playing field. We have used this methodology throughout the rules so that now every vehicle cost can be verified at the competition. Labor times have been replaced with a table costs based on the number and type of interfaces with surrounding parts. Composite lamination is based on surface area and number of plies. We have worked hard to remove all subjectivity from the cost report. There maybe some growing pains and things that can be improved but that is why we are trying to involve the teams at every step.

If you want a high level overview of the new rules see the tutorial that has been posted to the main page of fsaeonline.com. It's a pdf file and should be a good overview for alumni.

Bill

I was wondering is there going to be a new electronic BOM released this year or do teams create their own.

Teams will be provided a database tool to build their BOM. The database will have the systems preloaded and then the teams will add assemblies and parts, along with all the cost information for those parts. So currently the Excel spreadsheet will not be updated because that type of data will be output from the database.

Bill

Hi Mr. Rilley,
I read the cost tutorial, and in the a-arm example, the spherical bearing is in the fastener categorie. Why is that? If you look in the rules, it should not be a fastener, but a simple bought piece.
Thanks a lot

Mr. Riley,

I have downloaded the excel spreadsheet that you posted on fsaeonline.com, meant for internal team use. I have noticed that the process description fields have dropdown selections with broken references. Manual process entries are also restricted.

Is there a quick fix or will an updated spreadsheet be released?
Our team would like to use whatever tools are ready to begin working on the report.
Thanks!

-Luke, UofT FSAE

Spherical bearings will be materials. Same for rod ends. I hadn't developed the logic in the materials table when I did the example which is why I showed it as a fastener. In the actual database this will be error proofed because you can't add a spherical bearing to the fasteners fields. If you work with the Excel spreadsheet now posted on www.fsaeonline.com (lower right corner) you will have to manually put it in the materials section.

I have updated the Excel file to address Luke's bug report. Please let me know if anyone else has a problem.

A few comments: The database provides file links so you can attach engineering drawings, sketches, pictures or whatever you want for the Cost Judges to understand your design. You aren't required to have all three or any for that matter but providing sufficient documentation is part of the event. I have three fields, the idea being a part drawing, solid model (more for team use then anything since the judges don't have CAD) and an actual picture. The "use" field is an optional text field where you can describe what you are doing. For example if you have a drilled hole you might describe what hole you are drilling.

The Excel file pretty much duplicates the fields from the Access database. Please add or delete rows as needed as the database doesn't limit the number of materials, processes, fasteners or tooling entries (abbreviated m/p/f/t) per part or assembly. The final structure of the database lets you associate m/p/f/t entries with assemblies so that assembly labor can be broken out from the part cost.

Finally, the Access application sorts based on the field "ItemOrder" for the m/p/f/t areas. However, because time is so short we don't have the code to insert an entry which means if you have 10 items and want to insert one half way through you will have to manually renumber items 6-10. So I suggest numbering initially by 10's so you have plenty of digits available. This is shown in the Excel but the first item is 10, the second 20, and so on. That way if an additional item needs to be added between 10 and 20 you simply make it 15 (or anything else in between) and will save time.

One other comment: if you are making drawings or other documents to attach to the database please feel free to use the short part number convention. This is called out in the rules but I have gotten a couple of questions. So say you use the same relative design of chain tensioner (two rod ends into aluminum hex stock). You can make a drawing and put in the title block EN-00251-AA and then you can use it year to year or in more than one competition. The rest of the part number is for the electronic system and the Access application adds that automatically.

And don't forget the suffix, in this case "AA" is to help you track design and/or process changes so maybe the same tensioner with a lightening hole added later in the year would become EN-00251-BA. But if you don't use suffixes that is okay, just make them all "AA".

We've been getting a lot of Add Item Requests for brake rotors...

Brake rotors must be cost as "student made". That means that regardless of whether you made or purchased your rotors you should use the materials and processes tables to construct them scratch.

So one way to make a simple iron rotor:
Buy an iron plate (by mass)
Mill the outer diameter and inner diameter
Face both sides

There are many other ways to process even this simple part using the rules but the point is that all rotors are cost as made.

Since we're behind in getting the Database application distributed I've posted the fasteners table as it stands now. Please submit Add Item Requests for anything you don't see included.

Bill,

As a suggestion to ease the workload on the cost report volunteers, it may be in your best interest to release updated tables on a weekly or biweekly basis reflecing the changes depending on the frequency of add items requests. This would eliminate many teams submitting the same add items requests over and over.

For example, if UWashington submits an add items request for part X, you may get 20 other requests from other teams for part X between our submission and the postmark date for the cost report since none of us know if there was already a request made. If instead the cost report team released an updated table the week after UWashington's request showing part X, that would eliminate all subsequent requests thus your volunteers would not have to filter through these over and over.

Just a thought Bill. Thanks for all of your hard work. Please let me know if i should instead email this suggestion to the cost report team as i know the forums are not "official".

The revised tables will be up by the end of this weekend. I have been holding off because we haven't received that many Add Item Requests and have been focused on the Application development.

The updated materials table is now posted. The process table has also been updated.

Please see a major announcement about the new Cost Rules at either www.fsaeonline.com or directly at:

http://www.sae.org/servlets/pr...RMULA&RELEASE_ID=947

Hello

I`m from the Formula SAE Universidad Simon Bolivar team.

We are getting an error when trying to sync with the master server, this is the first time we use the software.

"Processing
Gathering data to syncronize...
Univerity Number: 176
Validating Autentication.. please wait
Invalid Authentication"

We have no idea of what to do to solve our issue.

Best regards.

For those of you entered into the Virginia event the deadline for the Add Item Requests is Feb 9 (tomorrow). The Aeroquip catalog is taking longer than we expected to process and post. It should be up in the next few days.

It is not necessary to submit an AIR for anything in the Aeroquip catalog. Any plumbing items that are not in the catalog should have an AIR submitted for them by the appropriate deadline. Again, if it's in the catalog even if we don't post the costs by tomorrow you don't need to submit an AIR. If it isn't in the catalog get your AIR in before the deadline for your competition.

Please pardon my ignorance if this is an extraordinarily simple question that I have missed the answer to. Where and when do I need to click to be able to get to the Access Application? I'm getting a little panicked because there's less than three weeks to do the report and it doesn't appear as though the application is ready. Is that something that will be released soon (or already is)?

The Access application is not yet available for general use. We are working out some of the bugs with the new software. We apologize as we are behind schedule. The teams entered into the Virgina event should be costing their cars using the Cost Tables on the website and the Excel templates (or their own spreadsheets or tools). There is no requirement to use the new software for North America events in 2009. As soon as the software is deemed functional it will be rolled out to all teams.