Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall

They recalled 2.5 million phones and swapped the batteries. The replacements caught fire too.

Tightly coupled systems where one small fault cascades and takes down the whole machine.

Room: Q3 Engineered
Year: 2016
Impact: $5.3B
Sector: Consumer electronics
Region: Global
Category: Technological

Why this room

The Note 7 sits in q3 because the fault was a millimetre-scale tolerance problem inside a component that is tightly coupled to everything else in the product: a battery pouch marginally too small for its cell, in a device with no slack anywhere in its packaging, supply chain or launch schedule. The cascade is the diagnostic feature of the room, since the remediation itself became the second failure: the recall shifted volume to a second supplier whose cells carried a different defect (ultrasonic welding burrs), so the replacement devices also ignited and forced a total product withdrawal. Tight coupling turned a component tolerance into the destruction of a flagship line and a multi-billion-dollar write-off within weeks.

The record

Samsung stated on 14 October 2016 that discontinuing the Note 7 would cost about $3 billion in the current and following quarters, taking the total cost of the recalls to at least $5.3 billion.certain
The US recall of 15 September 2016 covered about 1 million Note 7 units; the expanded recall of 13 October 2016 covered about 1.9 million units in the US, including the replacement devices issued under the first recall.certain
By the October 2016 expanded recall, Samsung had received 96 reports of Note 7 batteries overheating in the US (23 of them after the September recall), including 13 reports of burns and 47 reports of property damage.certain
Samsung's root-cause investigation, announced 23 January 2017 and supported by UL, Exponent and TUV Rheinland, tested about 200,000 assembled devices and 30,000 standalone batteries using roughly 700 engineers.high
Two different suppliers, two different defects: Battery A (Samsung SDI) suffered negative-electrode deflection because the cell was marginally too large for its pouch; Battery B (Amperex Technology) had abnormal ultrasonic welding burrs, up to about 80 microns, on the positive tab that pierced the separator and shorted the cell.high

Sources

The book

This entry is one of 111 in the register. The full story, and what it cost the people who lived it, is in Risky Business by Claudia Zeisberger, David Munro and Joanna Reijgersberg-Siew.

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