Chapter 14: Interviews

Posted: July 20, 2011 - 05:57:29 pm

“Can you do it?” Dexter asked the candidate.

Malcolm Engels answered, “Of course, I can. You’re talking about a single cup coffee maker.”

“I’m talking about a single cup coffee maker, that will last for at least twenty years,” Dexter said.

Malcolm Engels was in his mid-thirties and had been working as an engineer in a large company that produced coffee pots as one of its product lines. He had been there for over fifteen years working on a variety of coffee makers. His resume looked impressive. It covered just about every aspect of coffee maker design.

“Ten, twenty, or thirty years – it doesn’t matter. You get the right heating element, one that will last. You include a replaceable brewing basket. You’ll need an I-R sensor to make sure the cup is in place. Add in a simple water sensor and you’re done,” Malcolm said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Give me your thoughts on the product,” Dexter said thinking that the young man was being a little over optimistic in his answer.

Malcolm smiled at the question. “I see a machine with a broad base that is exceptionally stable. I hate it when a coffee maker tips over because you’re doing something or even just bump into it. It needs to have a little heft to it so that it’s bottom heavy. That heft can also provide the necessary thermal insulation to prevent any fire hazards.

“It will need a simple flat platform that fits into the base. There you’ll set the coffee cup. That way, you don’t have to worry about breaking the coffee pot. It’ll have to include an overflow catch basin because people might add more water than their cup holds. That’s not a real big problem. What you don’t want, is steaming hot water flowing out where people can get burned.

“The on/off button should be right in the front where you can see it. While brewing it should be red. When the water chamber is empty, the light should go out and the heating element turn off. We could add an alarm, but I don’t really see the need for that. That would be an executive decision. We are talking a single cup coffee maker and the person will probably be waiting for it to finish brewing.

“I see the top as being funnel shaped so that it’s easy to pour the water into the water chamber without spilling any of the water. It should have a cover on a simple hinge so that dust won’t fall into the water chamber and clog up the plumbing. After twenty years, dust will be an issue. Open the cover, add water by pouring it out of your coffee cup, and close the cover. Allow excess water to run off into the catch basin in case the person tries to overfill it. Neat, clean, and no mess.

“The brewing chamber can actually be an individual component. We could provide one that takes those K cups, one that takes coffee pods, and one that takes ground coffee out of a can. I don’t see any sense requiring people to use one kind of coffee delivery mechanism over another. Your coffee aficionados can grind their own beans and use it. If a new coffee standard comes out, a new brewing chamber can be introduced to support it.

“Of course, having a good interchangeable brewing chamber will be the greatest engineering challenge, but I’ve got some ideas in that direction. I don’t see any real issues with that, but it will take some time to make it a reality.

“The coffee maker should work with ceramic, foam, paper, or plastic cups of varying heights, shapes, and sizes. There will have to be some limits, but there are standard sizes for coffee cups. We don’t want the brewed coffee splattering out of the cup and messing up the area.

“There will be three sensors that basically run in serial. If anyone of the sensors gets tripped, then brewing will stop. The on/off switch will be the most visible to the user. It will be mechanical so it needs to be pretty robust to last twenty years. The I-R sensor to check the presence of the cup is basically all solid state. Getting one sufficiently durable to last twenty years might be a little tricky. A good electrical engineer could answer that question.

“The water sensor is just a float that can trip a simple switch. Since it has moving parts, it will be a little expensive to get one that will stand up to years of use.

“The heating element, one-way valve, and plumbing are not big deals. We’ve been making industrial brewers that have a lifetime of at least twenty years of hard service. The parts are out there. We just have to use them.

“We have to make sure that it can be operated single-handedly. You can’t expect someone to have to hold the cover while pouring the water or to have to use two hands to put the brewing chamber in place. I know that’s a small detail, but it’s an important one. My Granddad had a stroke, and can’t use his left hand.”

“It sounds like you’ve given this a lot of thought,” Dexter said.

“I’ll admit that I have,” Malcolm said. “The last coffee maker that I worked on couldn’t be used onehandedly. It was a design flaw introduced by another of my coworkers. I knew it and wanted management to give us the time to fix the design, but my boss pushed the project through over my objections. I had to tell my Granddad that he wouldn’t be able to use the coffee maker I designed. He looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. Believe me, I felt like one.”

Dexter always felt that pride in a product was an essential character trait in a good engineer. Why? Because a proud man would feel shame in knowingly releasing a bad product. Good engineers who took pride in their work produced good products.

“How did it do in the market place?” Dexter asked.

“It bombed. They dropped the price to clear out the inventory and discontinued the model after six months,” Malcolm answered.

Dexter asked, “What was the problem?”

With a look of disgust on his face, Malcolm answered, “It was the stupid brewing chamber. There was a last minute change introduced by one of the marketing gurus to make it swung out to the side. When the coffee grinds were wet and the coffee pot wasn’t in place, it was heavy enough to tip the coffee maker over on its side. I hadn’t designed the base for that kind of configuration. The brewing basket was supposed to slide out the front.

“In addition, you had to lift the brewing chamber off of a hinge to remove it so that you could empty the old grinds. That took two hands – one to lift the brewing chamber and another to hold down the rest of the coffee maker.”

“Did you have anything to do with the design of the brewing chamber?” Dexter asked.

“No. I worked on the core structure of the coffee maker,” Malcolm answered. “My initial design had a heavy wider base, but management decided that would cost an extra quarter to make so they had me reduce it in size. That’s what made it so unstable. If we had kept my original design, I doubt it would have tipped over.”

“Sounds like politics killed the product,” Dexter said.

Malcolm said, “You’re absolutely right. They put a recent college graduate in charge of designing the brewing basket. It was his first real product. He had an equal voice in design decisions as the rest of us. It was disgusting.”

“I’ve observed that phenomena before,” Dexter said.

There had been many occasions where he had sat in a meeting where someone who had never built a product was telling him how to do the job the right way. Most of the time, the kid was spouting nonsense that he had tried when he was a young snot-nosed engineer without experience. Back then, a senior engineer would explain where he was wrong and that would be the end of it. Now, the kid would flood management with memos and the issue would never end.

“I hope that you have a better management plan than that,” Malcolm said.

Dexter said, “Well ... That’s a tricky little thing.”

“What?”

“The single cup coffee maker will have one person on it. Any supporting engineering activities will be contracted to an independent,” Dexter said.

“Do you mean I’d have to do the whole thing?” Malcolm asked. His eyebrows nearly reached his hairline.

“More or less,” Dexter answered. “You’d have to work with the engineers over at the plastics company to assure that it can be manufactured. You’d need to work with them to select the plastics used in its construction. You would probably need to contract out the design of the electrical circuit to an electrical engineer.”

“Sweet!”

“Your name would be engraved on the side of the coffee maker,” Dexter said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Damn!” Malcolm said with a grin.

Dexter said, “I’m hiring two other engineers. One will work on the six-cup maker, and the other will do the twelve-cup coffeemaker. I think it would be a good idea for each of you to check the others’ work. Fresh eyes, and all of that.”

“No problem,” Malcolm said.

“The other two engineers would probably need to work closely together to assure a common style in the product. I don’t see that being an issue with a single cup coffee maker so you would have a greater degree of creativity in how you design it,” Dexter said.

“This is so good,” Malcolm said while rubbing his hands together.

Dexter said, “I’ll need a list of the resources you would need to produce the design. I’m looking at getting a three dimensional printer to make mock-ups of the designed product.”

“That’ll be great,” Malcolm said.

Dexter smiled. He said, “One more question.”

“What?” Malcolm asked.

“How long will it take?”

“Oh, boy,” Malcolm said.

He exhaled loudly and looked at the far wall.

“I want a reasonable estimate,” Dexter said.

Malcolm said, “That’s a tough one. My team usually worked on a year long cycle from product conception to manufacturing. Of course, every meeting was filled with a lot of bickering. I remember it took us almost two weeks to come to consensus on the on/off switch for one of our machines. Still, I’d be working alone which would require a lot more effort on my part.

“Boy...”

“Best guess,” Dexter said.

“Maybe fifteen to eighteen months. I’ll have to get a design environment set up, create the initial drawings, validate the design, select the plastics for the various parts of it, iterate the design a couple of times, cost it out, and see what kind of manufacturing procedure needs to be followed,” Malcolm said.

Dexter was pleased with that estimate. It was between the estimates given by the two other candidates for the same position. One candidate had boasted that nine months would be sufficient. That seemed a little quick to Dexter. The other candidate had said two years and he felt that was a little too long.