Achieving Efficiency It will take months or years to develop the next Particles. Your Executive Vice President for the Microprocessor Business Group appreciates your enthusiasm for science and innovation $-$ that's at the heart of Intel, and he does want the R&D team working on this. However, he isn't pleased that you dodged the short$-$term problem of slumping sales. What are you going to do to solve that problem? You go back to the need for a positioning strategy in the market. Our salespeople need to be armed with more than three years of data demonstrating Particles' effectiveness. They need the tools to communicate with existing customers about Particles' proven record in comparison to this new product, which has only one study and a limited scope. If we can't compete with the product as it is today, maybe we can compete on price. The production team plans to apply Six Sigma techniques to find a way to reduce the manufacturing cost of the products. This way Intel can cut the price and be able to compete without sacrificing profit margin.