Dr. Mike McDonagh relates this story, which dates back to the late 1970s and a UK battery factory manufacturing a range of industrial and lead-acid batteries.
These are the times before maintenance-free flooded SLI batteries were available. A new 2.75% antimony alloy had been introduced by the new process development engineer, Evan. It was highly mistrusted by the senior technical manager, Derek. The introduction had gone well, with new casting process instructions in place and two months of trouble-free, high-productivity casting experience.
However, for a week the casting department had been finding incidents of microcracks in their SLI grids. Productivity was down by 30% and arguments were breaking out between supervisors and casting personnel. The technical department was informed and concluded that the casters were not following the process specifications or did not have the right skill level for the process.
Poor mould maintenance due to a lack of regular caustic cleans or blocked cooling channels were cited as possible explanations. And after two weeks of maintenance checks and cleaning, the problem had worsened.
At this point, Evan was allocated to the problem. He concluded that hot tearing due to the wider solidus-liquidus eutectic range of this alloy was the root cause. Increased cooling and scraping off the cork spray layer in the deeper sections of the mould did not help. This resulted in missing parts of the casting due to over-chilling that prevented lead flow in key areas.
The standard fall-back of operators adding tin sticks to the pot was ineffective. Looking at the quality assurance records, Evan found that the lead specifications had been changed. The levels of the two grain-refining elements, copper and sulphur, had been lowered to the top end of the impurity band levels. He also noticed that Derek had authorised this.
The first action was to restore as much of the grain refining elements as possible. He did this by obtaining a large bag of flowers of sulphur and pushing all of it into the molten lead alloy of an SLI casting pot at an elevated temperature. The casting operator subsequently found that the problem was removed and obtained good results for the rest of the shift.
Confrontation
Evan then took samples of the lead alloy from several casting pots and analysed the sulphur and copper levels. They were below the minimum required for this type of alloy but were within the new specification limits. Evan confronted Derek, who denied making the change unilaterally.
Instead, he maintained that this had been discussed at an informal technical meeting two months earlier. Evan did not recall any such discussion. Derek showed him the minutes. It was marked as being sent to several people including him. One other person, a QA inspector called Justin, was on the list but had left two months earlier.
This was no mystery; the plain fact was that Derek and Trevor, the laboratory manager, had previously colluded to remove the copper and sulphur addition to the 2.5% antimony alloy. They had grave reservations about the higher levels of copper and sulphur, with both being regarded as detrimental to the alloy properties.
Copper at that time was thought to promote self-discharge and grid corrosion in a battery, and sulphur would create more dross on the molten lead surface, increasing the oxidation wastage. They did not understand, nor believe in, the action of grain refiners for low antimony lead alloys. Besides, the standard cycle life and corrosion tests gave worse results for the new alloy compared to the existing Pb-5% Sb grid alloy. In a misguided compromise, to reduce the alloy cost and projected battery failures, they removed copper and sulphur from the specified elements but increased their impurity levels in a new specification that met the lower end of Evan’s 2.5% antimony alloy.
Whilst Derek had the authority to do this on his own, and he fervently believed it was in the company’s best interest to do so, he knew the new MD, Peter, had drafted in Evan especially to modernise the technical and development department. Some 40 years’ experience in this industry had taught Derek that non-technical MDs like Peter would usually side with their recruits in matters they did not understand – particularly when there was a perception of progress being stifled by the ‘old guard’.
Falsified minutes
To cover his tracks, Derek had falsified minutes for the fictitious technical meeting. It included Evan and the QA inspector Janice, who had left a month earlier. He filed these with the QA administration documents. To further ensure this would not be discovered, he had instructed the department secretary to send memos to each of the attendees listed in the minutes.
This was done one week after Janice had left. He also left out Evan’s name from the document he gave to the secretary. As a result, both Janice and Evan knew nothing about the specification change, but on paper at least, they were both complicit in the decision.
Derek was convinced he would be proven right and that he was saving the company from a major warranty and financial problem. He regarded Evan as dangerous due to his lack of experience and willingness to try new materials and methods. This had been proven by a long history of disasters in the lead-acid battery industry.
Even minor changes in specifications and the use of supposedly safe and tested component materials had led to costly mistakes. In any event, he had kept the meeting records and if there were questions, it would be his word, with documentation, against Evan’s, without documentation.
Unfortunately for Derek, it turned out that Evan was very friendly with Janice’s husband Brad. They often played squash together at the local leisure centre. Evan had contacted Janice via Brad, but she was unable to recall the meeting with Derek where the alloy was discussed. However, she told Evan where she would have filed the minutes if they had been sent to her.
The next day Evan checked the filing cabinet disclosed by Janice but found none of Justin’s paperwork. Her replacement Katherine had removed them to an archive held by the technical department secretary, Marjory. On checking the records with Marjory, it turned out that there were two documents: the minutes and a memo to each of the attendees. Both had Evan’s and Janice’s names as recipients.
Evan was about to leave and check his filing cabinet when Marjory called him back having noticed something on the documents. She pointed out that the company logo on the memo, dated one week before the meeting, and the logo heading the minutes dated one week after, were the same colour. She was confused by this because a new batch of stationery was in use the week after the date on the invitation memo. It was a slightly different colour.
She remembered that it had not been returned to the supplier as they were completely out on the day it arrived. In another fortunate twist for Evan, Janice called him that afternoon. It turned out that she had not cleared out her old files at home and still had a folder with that same memo but without Evan’s name on it. She also offered to write a letter for Evan stating that this document was genuine and that she also had not heard anything about the revised specification at the meeting.
Going hysterical
The meeting soon degenerated into the usual shambles of the department heads shifting blame for underperformance. Derek accused the production department of a lack of operator skill and incorrect machine settings and the engineering department of poor mould maintenance.
It was when Jim confronted Derek with the change of specification that all went quiet. Derek duly pulled out the memo, the minutes and the battery accelerated corrosion test results to show that he had acted correctly and with the full knowledge and approval of the development engineer Evan. Despite Jim’s attempts to get him to reconsider in light of Evan’s production results, he would not budge, claiming that Evan’s case for a low-maintenance battery alloy was not proven.
He recommended that the company should revert to the original 5% antimony alloy. This solution would not only avoid current production problems, and it was here that Derek presented the life and corrosion test results. He used this to claim that reverting to the 5% antimony alloy would also prevent potential warranty claims.
At this point, Peter agreed to Jim’s request to allow Evan to present his findings. Once in the room Evan conclusively demonstrated that the addition of sulphur as a grain refiner would remove the production issues. Derek interjected with his concerns for battery life.
Evan countered by listing the international companies who used similar specifications and rejected the test parameters as invalid for SLI batteries. Derek then pulled out the doctored memo with his name on it, asking why he had agreed to the change.
Accused of lying
Opening his folder, Evan calmly handed the memo obtained from Justin to Peter who noted the omission of his name. Derek then accused him of making a fake memo, to cover himself. To counter this, Evan pointed out the colour of the company logo on the forms, as described by Marjory. However, the final nail in Derek’s coffin was the handwritten letter from Janice.
Derek’s subsequent protestations that Janice was in league with Evan, due to his friendship with her husband, and that she had left the company, were batted away.
Peter summed up the situation: “Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make a false case and to cover their tracks. I find it incredible that a senior manager would resort to these tactics. I find it equally incredible that a respected development engineer would make such a specification change, and then revert to the original to solve the problem.
“However, I also know Janice and her family, and I am pretty certain she would not debase herself to make such a false claim. Admittedly, she may not recollect the meeting, but the weight of evidence tips me towards Evan being right.” He then dismissed the meeting, having told Evan to get the production problem sorted with his temporary sulphur fix and to change the specification back to the original 2.75% antimony alloy. He kept Derek back for a private word.
The outcome for the company was positive: the alloy was used for several years and actually reduced warranty returns. It was replaced, however, by a 1.8% antimony alloy using selenium as a grain refiner. This simultaneously gave the company a maintenance-free SLI battery, and extended battery life with better cold-cranking ability.
This allowed fewer plates to be used in the construction which saved a great deal of money and earned Evan a promotion to technical manager.
However, shortly after that decisive meeting, Derek and Trevor decided it was time to leave – with Peter’s best wishes of course.
