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