A report of HP's "Battery Incident"

A report of HP's "Battery Incident"

Introduction

Multinational organizations all around the world streamline their processes and functions to make sure that the products they make are of top quality and the services they provide to the customer is unmatched and unparallel. However, even the best organizations sometimes miss the mark and end up producing products that are faulty or damaged. One of such cases was the Hewlett-Packard battery incident where the batteries of HP laptops started heating up to the point of explosion. In this report, we study that incident in detail and also consider the damage recovery steps that HP took as an organization, to save its image and to maintain its name and reputation in the markets.

Company Overview

According to the Hewlett-Packard official website, Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is one of the biggest electrical giants in the world, founded by Bill Hewlett together with Dave Packard. It is generally regarded as a large American multinational hardware and software corporation with its headquarters located in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP Company specializes in computing, developing and manufacturing data storage, networking hardware, software designing as well as delivering services.

The incident

Hewlett Packard, one of the leading IT companies of the world and a leader in computer hardware and software manufacturer, recalled more than 54000 of its laptop batteries after repeated complaints about overheating and in some cases, burning and exploding. The details of such incidents were discussed in the previous module and have been analyzed further in this module. Hewlett Packard (famously recognized as HP) released a notice on their official websites which read:

“On 14 October 2005, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, HP announced a worldwide recall and replacement of the batteries used in certain HP notebooks. HP customers affected by this program can choose to receive a free replacement battery for each battery checked, marked and withdrawn.

HP and the manufacturer of the battery cells have identified a defect in the batteries assembled and manufactured between March and September of 2004. HP believes that the defect represents a potential danger to the safety of customers.

An internal short circuit may cause the battery cells to overheat resulting in a melting or burning the plastic coating, leading to a risk of burns or fire.”(HP, 2005)

To help customers identify whether their laptop battery was one of the defected items, HP released a chart that showed all those batteries and their model numbers which were defected and could be returned. Additionally, to further facilitate the customers, HP posted the following steps on their websites:

Locate the model number of the laptop that is on the frame of the screen or on the bottom of the laptop

If the notebook model is NOT listed above, the program does not cover the battery

If the laptop model is listed above, turn off the handset

Unplug the AC adapter from the laptop

Remove the battery from the laptop

For a multinational company, especially one which competes in a market as competitive as the computer and ...