Specifications

• Charles Martz.
• Hello, is this the Research and Development department?
• Yes, this is. I'm in charge here. The official title is R'n'D Director – just call me Charles.
• Robert Sachs here. In the same building, but on the floor 18. I'm the new Product Manager and responsible for new product development, we have not met yet. But we will. Charles, I have the specs of a new product here, all eighty pages of them. I'll mail these to you in a moment. I'll go through these now just to give you some idea here what we are looking for.
• Okay. Just hit it.
• When you heat it to one hundred degrees celsius, it should change its form, become invicible, and rise to the sky.
• Hmm. Could it have an electric motor with a propellor or something. It could fly like a helicopter. For measuring the temperature, it needs a sensor of some sorts. The invicibility thing is something that needs further thought. You would not believe what magicians achieve with perfectly-positioned mirrors.
• Yeah, in a dark night, they can even make the Statue of Liberty disappear. Ok, it says here that it should be easy to transport it to customers through pipes, copper pipes for instance. You know, just to keep the delivery costs down.
• Ok, let's put some rubber wheels to it. The electric motor is already there, so… Wheels should do the trick.
• What if the copper pipes have turns and crossings? How will it achieve its goal without getting lost?
• That's an easy one. You still don't have a satellite-powered GPS system on your car, do you? We can mix that with an elevation sensor. Then we achieve position based controlling in all three dimensions. Let's embed a computer into that thing. They are dirt cheap, nowadays.
• Yes, I'm starting to get a feeling that this will be a piece of cake. But, let's see what the paper says. On page twelve now. It should aid in carrying waste and dirt from households to the cleaning plant.
• We have these left-over plastic containers here. We can always attach one to it, and input the GPS coordinates of a route to the cleaning plant. By the way, what are you going to do with this piece of machinery? What's the purpose?
• I'm sorry, I do not know that yet. According to our marketing department there already is a competing product on the market now. They say it is old-fashioned and quite cheap, a bit dull actually. There is no hype around it, Music Television doesn't advertise it at all. However, it is in daily use all over the globe. It has 100 per cent market penetration. Just think, if we can grab just a couple of percentages of that. Can you see the enormous potential here? If we design and market it correctly, our company will reap a lot of profits.
• Cool. This is very cool. I feel like I am on an edge of something really big phenomenal thing. Flat run tyres are nothing compared to this. When we can start researching this more closely, do you have the budget for this? You do need a feasibility study or something?
• Yes, of course, we will come back to those later. I'm skimming here. On page forty now. When its temperature falls to zero, its volume increases and it turns very hard.
• That is quite easy to implement with the temperature sensor already in place, and a couple of airbags that will inflate and de-inflate when needed.
• That sorted out then. Here comes the next requirement; when hit or on a quick collision, it should make a nice sound of some sorts.
• All right. Let's add more sensors to gain motion-sensitivity and touch-sensitivity. Like often is the case, the customer should be able to download new sounds from the internet. Everything should be user-customizable, nowadays, as you know. We have the computer in there, so this is quite trivial. Top-ten hits, and funny burping noises, that's what the customers want. A loudspeaker should be added, of course.
• This sounds great. I think we are surpassing our competitor now. Page fifty-two; it should be small enough to be drinkable and nutritious. Drinkable and nutritious? How small can you make this gadget?
• Roughly a cube, each side around fifteen centimeters, with the features mentioned. Batteries excluded, however. What on earth are these requirements; did you say drinkable and nutritious?
• I have to check those, there could be a mistake somewhere. Page seventy now; the manufacturing process should be environment-friendly. Well, I did see that coming. The production should consume only two chemical elements.
• Hmm, getting quite tricky. It seems that there is just too much features to implement - feature creep is the term we use in this kind of situation. How an earth has the competitor solved these problems, and put these all to a single product?
• True, very true and valid question. It is dinner time now. Should we discuss about these things over a steak at the restaurant nearby?
• Yes, that is a great idea Robert. I will meet you by the entrance. See you in a minute. I'm the guy with a yellow-striped necktie.