OK I will ask as no-one else has.

minithingsforlife

Admin posted this in Site updates.

A system has been made that automatically reads the inventory from Lego instructions booklets. This is used to make sure the inventory is accurate. Sometimes the current inventories are missing some of the "rarer" items like printed tiles for example, this will make sure all of those items appear in the inventory.


Please explain Lawrence as this sounds quite fantastical.

Lawrence

I should have clarified, only the instructions with an inventory, so modern ones. It reads the item numbers from the back page, including the quantity. These then get turned into inventory submissions for me to check and approve. The majority are alternate parts where the instructions differ from the online inventory, others are things like cloth and foil.

theHellmouth

Quite fantastical indeed!!

Does this mean inventories of new sets don't need to be made by users anymore? Maybe only double check them?

Lawrence

They already didn't, we usually get the inventory from lego at the same time, or within a week or two of a sets official release. It then only needs a human to add any new parts to the catalog, but I've done a lot of work to speed that part up too.

Loremonger

@Admin I'm curious. How do you get the inventories from LEGO?

Hoddie

When there are alternative pieces I really wish it were possible to show an image highlighting the differences. Sometimes it's obvious from the descriptions but most often it isn't. Maybe we could all contribute to this in some way?

sidersdd

I'm assuming they are obtained the same way Brickset gets them.
http://www.brickset.com/inventories/

Some sort of feed from and hits to the replacement parts service.
https://service.lego.com/en-us/replacementparts

Or are you getting them from Brickset, who are getting them from the replacement parts service?

sidersdd

Two weeks from official release from this service is not bad. Pretty timely. However, for those wishing to get a head start on selling new parts and new figs (for those willing to pay an early adopter premium), it's a bit of a lag. Plus the replacement parts service doesn't inventory the figs - just the fig parts. It would also be interesting to know the accuracy rate from this feed. I do like the two-phase verification process on the other site for confidence when parting out a set into a store.

sidersdd

When there are alternative pieces I really wish it were possible to show an image highlighting the differences. Sometimes it's obvious from the descriptions but most often it isn't. Maybe we could all contribute to this in some way?

I agree - I like on the other site when people take side-by-side photos of the variants.

sidersdd

I should have clarified, only the instructions with an inventory, so modern ones. It reads the item numbers from the back page, including the quantity. These then get turned into inventory submissions for me to check and approve. The majority are alternate parts where the instructions differ from the online inventory, others are things like cloth and foil.

That's pretty cool. So you have a program that finds the parts page from the pdf (such as http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildinginstructions/6090116.pdf) and scrapes the images for quantities and item numbers?

Instructions don't appear to be as timely as the inventories.
http://www.brickset.com/instructions/

Lawrence

Anyone is welcome to submit an alternate picture for a part to show the differences between items. You should probably submit it against the uncoloured version of the part. I try to describe the differences in the name also.

The automatic inventories are a "bonus" any inventory can also be created manually as you have helpfully done for 79011.

With regards to the timeliness of instructions, that page can be a bit misleading, Lego regularly update and rerelease instructions for sets that are quite old. Sometimes the instructions can come out before the set, sometimes weeks later, but not usually months later.