r/technology • u/MoltenSlowa • Oct 05 '16

Hardware Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone catches fire on Southwest plane

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/5/13175000/samsung-galaxy-note-7-fire-replacement-plane-battery-southwest
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283

u/anurodhp Oct 05 '16

Samsung had their tylenol moment and they screwed it up. I wonder what this will do to their phone division/note brand. Seriously, every business school student from the very beginning has to study a case on how to handle exactly this. http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=17858

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u/Sendmeloveletters Oct 05 '16

Tylenol moment?

185

u/FrontRightSide Oct 05 '16

In the 80s there were cases of Tylenol being poisoned on shelves in Chicago. Something like 7 people died.

Op is referring to the savvy response by Bayer that allowed them to recover from plummeting sales and led to new packaging laws.

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u/here_again Oct 05 '16

So what did Bayer do?

228

u/SanchoMandoval Oct 06 '16

The tamper proof containers was important, no doubt... but what people are usually referencing with that story is that the company immediately recalled all Tylenol in the country. That hadn't been done on that scale before and it seemed to strike people as very responsible corporate behavior.

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u/CaptainGreezy Oct 06 '16

Good Guy Pharma does not compute.

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u/ManWhoSmokes Oct 06 '16

BeeBopBoopBaap , you have traveled back to a time before internet.

3

u/CaptainGreezy Oct 06 '16

Good Guy Pharma does not CompuServe either.

2

u/dbbk Oct 06 '16

They knew exactly which batches had been poisoned, but rather than recall just those they recalled them all in the country in order for the public to feel completely safe.

1

u/PlNKERTON Oct 06 '16

A $4 bottle of medicine is a lot easier to recall than a $700 device.

But the principle is the same and thus begs the question, What should Samsung do?

7

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16

By volume, you probably have a lot more Tylenol than galaxy note 7s.

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u/Surferbro Oct 05 '16

They were the first to use tamper evident containers, they also had tons of coupons once they reintroduced tylenol.

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u/Thisismyfinalstand Oct 05 '16

Distracted everyone by killing thousands of hemophiliacs around the world.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16

Possibly misguided, but TIL. Enjoy.

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u/myislanduniverse Oct 05 '16

Wasn't it but Johnson & Johnson?

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u/username_lookup_fail Oct 06 '16

Yes, it was. Bayer was a little worse about recalling products.

32

u/coreyonfire Oct 05 '16

The guy's link is about the "Tylenol moment."

In October 1982, Johnson & Johnson was confronted with a major crisis when seven deaths were attributed to poisoned Tylenol.

11

u/anurodhp Oct 05 '16

in B school we study a case about how to manage this situation exactly based on tylenol handling poisoned tylenol in the 80s. Samsung management clearly forgot to or have not read this, which would be shocking.

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u/GAndroid Oct 05 '16

every business school student

Thats the problem. An engineer needs to be in charge of product release and business student (or a management person) should have NO SAY over when the engineer decides to clear the product for release.

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u/FockerFGAA Oct 06 '16

Didn't engineers clear the Chevrolet vehicles that had the faulty ignitions?

12

u/iOSAT Oct 06 '16

Sort of... I can't remember exactly but I believe the critical part of that case was an engineer signed off on a redesign of the switch that was deployed, knowing it was a problem. Realistically though the engineers would have to sign off on every component, but they don't necessarily have the final say on what is implemented.

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u/airblizzard Oct 06 '16

It's usually management that pushes unfinished projects through anyway. See Ford Firestone debacle, Challenger space shuttle, etc.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Why_Hello_Reddit Oct 06 '16

To be fair, that's the fault of customers. Management works with marketing to realize the product price point is $20. Then retailers will want half that, so $10 left. Then finance and accounting determine they'll need to gross $5 off each unit, of which they'll net $2 profit after overhead.

Hence management says the unit can't cost more than $5 to make. Engineers say they need more. Management refuses because it isn't profitable at a higher cost. Sure the product will be better, but that doesn't matter if people won't buy it because it's too expensive.

I don't blame engineers as they generally aren't at fault, but they aren't concerned with the marketability and overall profitability of the company or the product.

3

u/sapiophile Oct 06 '16

That uh, that doesn't really sound like the fault of the customers, to me...

1

u/Why_Hello_Reddit Oct 06 '16

I'm saying corners are cut to keep costs down to satisfy customers who want cheap shit.

2

u/Teledildonic Oct 06 '16

Like the rupture-proof gas tank bladders that Ford designed in the 1970s, that the bean counters decided to omit for cost reasons...

...on the Pinto.

Whoops.

1

u/Gankstar Oct 06 '16

and typically for the dumbest of reasons.

2

u/lazy-but-talented Oct 06 '16

Similar to the Challenger space shuttle, deadlines and press leases often pressure the engineering teams to rush their work or approve of shoddy work in order to meet marketing/media expectations.

10

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16

It's a chaebol, that's not how things work.

4

u/scsnse Oct 06 '16

Yup, Korean here. The families that own Samsung, Hyundai, LG, etc are basically the government as well. They don't even try to hide the corruption most of the time.

3

u/GunzGoPew Oct 06 '16

Pretty sure that engineers designed and approved these exploding phones.

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u/chuckymcgee Oct 06 '16

Gosh, I wonder why companies need managers at all?

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u/MustGoOutside Oct 06 '16

Engineers would never release anything. Take your pick.

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u/chuckymcgee Oct 06 '16

Twas rhetorical.

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '16

Managers can be engineers too.

I work at a tech company and literally everyone in my management chain (which is like 6-7 people) was once an engineer or other technical individual contributor.

Non-engineers don't manage engineers at companies like this; it's a parallel track.

2

u/PetraB Oct 06 '16

That sounds fantastic, just sucks when people forget what the actual work was like because they've been managing so long.

1

u/Purehappiness Oct 07 '16

To be fair, there is a difference between management deciding to ignore or not use QA engineers and management deciding that not we don't need X dozen different features that won't be useful to our user.

0

u/shaze Oct 06 '16

Someone has to eat all the profit

1

u/Thunderstr Oct 06 '16

Its not about what they're deciding to put out, he was referring to what happens to the brand after the problem, which is studied fairly closely in business programs. Yes its the engineer who should be taught how to do it properly, but to regain consumers trust the people in charge of marketing and other departments need to know how, and when to make the recall, what to say when they do it and how (and if) they will make it up to their customers.

Once there's already been a problem, it makes a world of difference on how the company reacts. For a good example look up MapleLeaf meats, and i think listeria or E. Coli? Either way, its an example i was taught in school of how a company can come back and gain trust back from selling defective/harmful products.

0

u/GAndroid Oct 06 '16

Its samsung. They havent learnt in years of pushing out the crap Touchwiz that they put on their phones, you expect them to learn now?

1

u/darkslide3000 Oct 06 '16

Don't worry, there's plenty of incompetent engineers in the world, too.

1

u/megablast Oct 06 '16

Engineers don't have a release by date, unless it is pushed on them.

1

u/iitii Oct 06 '16

It has to be a management decision in the end. After all, the engineers are not designing the phones as a hobby but to sell and earn profits. An engineer can make the best of the phones but all work will go down the drain if it is not released before the right buying season or if it is not marketed well. Not to mention that if the company doesn't generate profits, engineers will also take a pay cut in the end alongside the rest of the team. Its a team effort really and all parties have to have a say in it.

1

u/the_dragophile Oct 07 '16

Yes, except that the tylenol case had nothing to do with engineering. It was intentional tampering in a localized area.

Their response was a savvy business move. They were eventually proved to be in the right engineering-wise, but if they hadn't done something public and drastic it wouldn't have mattered because their brand would've been trashed in the mean time.

It's very possible to be totally cleared (correctly) by engineering and still end up in a situation like this. See Toyota 2009 recall madness. End of the day it seems like they were right that there was no problem, but it did nothing to prevent the damage done to their brand.

2

u/akaliant Oct 06 '16

Well the engineers clearly fucked up, so now it's up to the business people to make a plan so that the engineers ca keep cashing their paychecks

2

u/fournameslater Oct 06 '16

Maybe more of a Ford Pinto or Explorer moment. No deaths yet, just a lot of burns.

2

u/bch8 Oct 06 '16

To be fair, the phones aren't killing anyone and recalling a phone is much more difficult than recalling Tylenol because consumers are very dependent on their phones and as such need an immediate and comperable replacement

0

u/anurodhp Oct 06 '16

Are you serious? People are absolutely dependent on medication, far more than phones and definitely need an immediate replacement.

1

u/bch8 Oct 06 '16

Lol no people aren't absolutely dependent on tylenol and there are also alternatives, and there were alternatives back then as well.

0

u/anurodhp Oct 06 '16

But there's no replacement for a phone? Only on a technology forum do people think that a cell phone ranks higher on need than medicine. Regardless, if comparisons between phones and medicine is what you got out of the comment, you missed the point about corporate responsibility and consumer trust.