Samsung SDI, Samsung Electronics’ battery-making division is looking to make safety a priority from now on, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Cho Nam-seong revealed on Monday. While speaking at a meeting in Samsung SDI’s research facility in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, Cho said how everyone at the company should be looking to “establish a corporate culture that puts safety first.” The firm’s CEO also pointed out how this change has already started last year after Samsung SDI adopted numerous transparency policies and simplified the process of reporting issues and communicating with its parent company and the general public. Cho said he believes this new corporate culture will serve as a foundation for Samsung’s future endeavors.
As for the specifics of Samsung SDI’s new corporate culture, the company will reportedly put a larger focus on advancing its research and development operations with the goal of manufacturing safer products. Samsung Electronics’ battery-making unit is also planning to make some changes to its corporate structure for the same reasons. Ultimately, the firm is striving to find new ways to gain a competitive edge over other battery manufacturers without making any compromises on product safety, Cho said. In the long-term, this means Samsung SDI will invest in developing new materials and manufacturing methods which should be safer, more scalable, and generally cheaper than existing solutions. The company’s CEO specifically mentioned improved cylindrical batteries and polymer technologies while speaking about this endeavor, but he revealed no further details on the thereof. In other words, he didn’t reveal much given how cylindrical and polymer solutions account for everything from portable smartphone batteries to high-capacity car batteries.
Cho’s announcement comes shortly after Samsung Electronics promised to overhaul its quality assurance practices following the discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7. While the company initially believed its latest flagship shipped with faulty batteries, that notion was dispelled after many replacement units of the device also started catching fire. Given how these units were equipped with batteries that weren’t manufactured by Samsung SDI, the South Korean tech giant opened a more thorough investigation into the matter which was recently concluded, and Samsung is expected to go public with its results by the end of the month.