Dell, Sony Discussed Battery Problem 10 Months Ago

InfoWorldMike writes "Dell and Sony knew about and discussed manufacturing problems with Sony-made Lithium-Ion batteries as long as ten months ago, but held off on issuing a recall until those flaws were clearly linked to catastrophic failures causing those batteries to catch fire, a Sony Electronics spokesman said Friday. Spokesman Rick Clancy said the companies had conversations in October 2005 and again in February 2006. As a result of those conversations, Sony made changes to its manufacturing process to minimize the presence and size of the particles in its batteries. However, the company did not recall batteries that it thought might contain the particles because it wasn't clear that they were dangerous, Clancy said. Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden declined to comment on the conversations with Sony in October and February, but told InfoWorld that Dell was 'confident that the manufacturing process at Sony has been changed to address this issue. Now our focus is erring on the side of caution to ensure no more incidents occur.'"

well they would have done something then

[atarione (601740)]

but the laptop with the response plan on it burst into flames.

Of course they knew it was dangerous

[pimpimpim (811140)]

Otherwise, why would they ever start to examine these things close enough to find out there were small particles in it.

Furthermore, I don't think they were talking about just malfunctioning of the batch of batteries, because I guess general malfunctioning was not an issue with these batteries. Otherwise the batteries that exploded would have already been returned to Dell before they could even get the chance to explode. Or where these all brand new batteries that exploded? And how many stories are there about malfunctioning batteries on Dells, except for the exploding ones?

Sony!

[bogaboga (793279)]

When it comes to electronics, I have been one of the people holding SONY in very hight esteem. But the behavior of the company with its music, and problems with quality in its devices, have dented my approval. What is going on at SONY? Now there is this battery thing...I think it's time to look at other players in the business. SAMSUNG to me, looks very promising. No wonder SONY's market share has been diminishing since the early 90s.

Hah!!

[vistic (556838)]

Why on Earth would you hold Sony products in high esteem? I could understand that thinking back in the 1980s... but since the 90s came Sony has always had poor-quality problems except in their professional gear. There's nothing "high-end" or quality about them.

Personally I think it's because they've stopped manufacturing their things in Japan. Now it's all about Malaysia or Indonesia or Taiwan or China or something.

Check where things are manufactured, it can tell you a lot about what level quality to expect. Different countries have different cultures and different governments and different labor laws and quality assurance programs and work ethics and wages, etc.

Then again I also can't believe you're starting to think Samsung is looking good. They've improved a lot, thanks to improvements in South Korea itself, but they're still kind of crap and have a long way to go. South Korea used to be one of the WORST countries in as far as quality manufacturing goes, but they've done a lot in the past 5 years or so to try and fix things.

Re:

[multipart/mixed (163409)]

I agree wholeheartedly.

Ask any TV repair professional; back about 1990 when the Sony TVs started saying "Made in Mexico", the quality dropped like a stone.

Re:Hah!!

[Abreu (173023)]

Sony TVs "made in Mexico" were only assembled in Mexico, from low quality chinese components... The blame lies in China, not across the Rio Grande.

Re:

[pheede (37918)]

I don't know enough about the quality of Sony products in general to agree or disagree with your comment. But I find it just a little bit funny, that the two Dell batteries I have, which are part of this recall, were both manufactured in Japan.

Direct Cause

[staticneuron (975073)]

Was it that hard to find a direct cause for this? I would have imagined they would create a stress test to replicate these real-life situations in whitch the labtops caught on fire.

Simple Mathematics

[sincewhen (640526)]

A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Re:Simple Mathematics

[Rosco P. Coltrane (209368)]

If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Are you saying Sony execs watch porn instead of working?

Re:

[kjart (941720)]

A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

I know what you're paraphrasing and it does apply, but I have to ask, so what? Of course an equation like this is going to be used and research is going to be done. If a single catastrophic failure occurs, do you recall all 10,000,000 of your product? How about after 10? 100? There will always be freak occurences where horrendous events happen in unexpected ways - you have to figure out whether it's just that or part of a

Re:Simple Mathematics

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

Speaking of which, I'm curious about how many incidents of battery fires have actually been reported. I'm aware of the famous one obviously, but how many others have been reported? Is this actually a case where dozens/hundreds of batteries are bursting into flame, or merely a case of one hugely publiscized incident? I wouldn't be surprised if Dell was issuing the recall to save face after the huge publicity of that one fire, even if the incidences dont merit it.

According to the original CNN story [cnn.com] that was broadcast/published when the story broke, Sony's Rick Clancy had told the AP that about "a half-dozen or so fires in the United States" had occurred, causing Dell and Sony to study the problem for "more than a month." That's on top of the highly-publicised fire in Japan. Of course, 10 months is more than a month, right?

But the manufacturing defect that's causing the problem would obviously cause such problems. In TFA, a Dan Doughty from Sandia National Labratories describes the condition that occured -- metal flakes causing a short between the anode and cathode -- as causing the battery to discharge ALL of it's energy at once. Now, if you have a laptop manual handy, read the part about where it says how many Watt hours (WHr) the battery holds. A Dell Inspiron 8500 has a 72 WHr battery.

We know that by definition a Watt is the amount of joules/second. So, a 1 Watt hr = 3600 Joules per energy. Now doing the math (3600 * 72) we get 259,200 joules of energy in that Inspiron battery. Keep in mind that there is other heat around the battery as well. Now discharge those 259,200 joules all at once with all that heat around it. Putting that in perspective, a firecracker only discharges about 3900 joules of energy, while a 100g stick of dynamite discharges about 400,000 joules.

<sarcasm> But no, I'm sure they had no idea. </sarcasm>

Re:

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

s/joules per energy/joules per second

Dell - The best Bang for your buck !!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Dell - The best Bang for your buck !!

Story?

[JabberWokky (19442)]

Um, what exactly is the story here? They talked about and researched the issue before issuing a recall. I have a feeling that could be said about every recall... pretty much every business action that occurs. Seldom are the dart or "mouse with ink on it's feet" methods used anymore. They were alerted to the problem, got confirmation and addressed the problem.

So what exactly is the story?

--
Evan

Re:

[Snover (469130)]

The story here is that they knew that their batteries were defective and had the potential for damage or loss of life but they didn't do anything about it when they found out.

"A times B times C equals X. If X is less that the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

Re:Story?

[Minwee (522556)]

"The story here is that they knew that their batteries were defective"

Define "defective".

Never mind, I'll read the article and do it for you.

"Discussions were about the problem of small metal particles that had contaminated Lithium-Ion battery cells manufactured by Sony, causing batteries to fail and, in some cases, overheat."

They were aware that some batteries could fail. "Fail" and "In some cases, overheat", do not mean "OHMYGODALLTHEBATTERIESAREGOINGTOKILLPEOPLE!" It means "There is a problem with the batteries and we should look at them."

Unless of course you think that that clearly means they were dangerous.

"[...] the company did not recall batteries that it thought might contain the particles because it wasn't clear that they were dangerous. [...] "We didn't have confirmation of incidents [involving fires] until relatively recently.""

The story here is that they knew the batteries were defective, investigated what was happening, and did something about it when they found out what was happening. Look closely at your, sorry, Chuck Palahniuk's equation. When you have no reason to believe that B or C are any greater than zero, then X equals zero. It doesn't take a genius to figure that part out.

Lies, damn lies, and PR

[Zocalo (252965)]

That's pure crap. Why else would they have registered the "dellbatteryprogram.com" domain name back on 10th November of last year if they didn't think that a recall was going to be required? You might also notice from the WHOIS information that they are not hosting the domain on their own DNS servers like they do with their other domains. I think it far more likely that they had their discussions with Sony, but decided not to risk a PR disaster by performing a complete recall unless failures made it absolutely necessary to do so.

My company made the decision to dump Dell just before this latest fiasco broke. Between regular failures of wireless modules in the D600 laptops, having to replace the motherboards of every one of GX270 desktops (OK, not really Dell's fault that one, but it's their badge up front for management to see) and totally abysmal support we've had enough. From their recent earning reports, I guess we're not alone in that.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and PR

[sharkey (16670)]

IIRC, Dell had a battery recall in December 2005 for a different issue.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and PR

[by Anonymous Coward]

You recall correctly. In december 2005, Dell recalled about 20000 batteries in the US [cpsc.gov], and about 35000 worldwide [heise.de]. I can still remember checking my own laptop's battery on dellbatteryprogram.com, and beeing dissapointed that I didn't get a fresh one for free. This time however, my old and worn battery will be replaced.

How much proof is necessary?

[NexFlamma (919608)]

IANAL, and I'm really curious about this: How much evidence would be necessary to convict them on something akin to endangering the public by releasing notebooks that they knew could combust in a literal fireball?

I'm really hoping there is at least some legal protocol to protect consumer's from things like this that are rushed out the door at the (potential) expense of people's lives, other than class action suits.

forgotten the TV lawsuits

[Wansu (846)]

I suppose SONY and Dell either forgot all the lawsuits in the 60s and 70s stemming from TV sets burning down houses or they just didn't think the same kind of thing could happen to them. They will pay a hefty price.

I worked at Dell

[blixco (28719)]

for six years, and the one thing you, as a consumer, have to know about Dell (and possibly companies like it) is that there are two forces that drive their decisions: money and litigation. Dell has cut cost to the bone, not just in their supply chain but throughout their enterprise. Every dime is scrutinized, every step planned to the Nth to determine if the cost / benefit hits a sweet spot. The main driver behind product launches is schedule, and not quality. With the right schedule, Dell can be to the market at a price that makes profit.

If there are problems with the equipment, those problems are weighed against the overall cost they contain. If Dell determined that their notebooks blew up, they'd have to weigh the odds, the cost of litigation, and the cost of bad press versus the cost of fixing the problem.

The only bad thing about this way of thinking from a business perspective is that economy overrides lesson learned. Dell has had battery recalls more than a few times in the past, and this latest may cement the idea with people that Dell = exploding batteries. But rather than proactively develop test plans and more rigorous standards for their suppliers, they simply look at the bottom line.

Ultimately this has served them well from a cash perspective, but this past year has seen a lot of their karma catch up with them; their process (which is King at Dell) has run out of wiggle room for cost cutting, and bad press like this (combined with the cost to replace those batteries) may start to chip away at their altar of the almighty dollar.

You'd be amazed, though, how myopic quarter to quarter thinking makes a corporation.

Re:I worked at Dell

[DerekLyons (302214)]

I worked at Dell for six years, and the one thing you, as a consumer, have to know about Dell (and possibly companies like it) is that there are two forces that drive their decisions: money and litigation.

No news there - it's the same at pretty much any other corporation.
 
 

If there are problems with the equipment, those problems are weighed against the overall cost they contain. If Dell determined that their notebooks blew up, they'd have to weigh the odds, the cost of litigation, and the cost of bad press versus the cost of fixing the problem.

Again, the same as at virtually every other manufacturer, from baby food to SUV's.

VBScript to find Dell Battery Part #

[PoitNarf (160194)]

I'm sure there are plenty that were in my situation. Large organization, many Dell Latitude laptops, and many users that probably won't check the part # on their batteries to see if it's included in the recall. I included the following lines to an inventory script we run on all the computers on our Windows domain to collect hardware information which is stored in a SQL database. It is able to get the battery manufacturer and part # from the BIOS. Here's the code for all who are interested:

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_PortableBattery")

For Each objItem in colItems
Wscript.Echo "Manufacturer: " & objItem.Manufacturer
Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objItem.Name
Next