Recently, the quality issues of power banks have continued to spark heated discussions. From the explosion and combustion of products from leading brands to recalls, and then to related companies halting production for rectification, this turmoil is not only a product quality and safety crisis but also exposes deeper issues within the industry, such as supply chain management and quality control.
Ongoing Reshuffling: The Power Bank Industry Enters the "Era of Strictest Supervision"
In fact, even before this recent turmoil, safety issues in the power bank industry were already severe. According to a report by Upstream News, from 2020 to 2023, the random inspection results of power banks sold online by the State Administration for Market Regulation showed failure rates of 19.8%, 25.0%, 35.4%, and 44.4%, respectively. In early 2024, the State Administration for Market Regulation sampled 88 batches of mobile power sources, with the failure rate for safety items such as overcharge protection reaching 37.5%.
In response to the chaos in the power bank industry, on June 18, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology solicited public comments on the mandatory national standard "Technical Specification for Safety of Mobile Power Sources." As a mandatory standard specifically formulated for mobile power sources, the new regulation is more targeted, meaning that the industry's quality requirements for mobile power sources will be further enhanced.
Meanwhile, the new 3C certification rules implemented in May are considered the "strictest in history": changing from enterprises voluntarily submitting samples to random sampling by laboratories at factory sites, doubling the frequency of unannounced inspections to twice a year, requiring mass-produced products to be completely consistent with certified samples, and mandating that production traceability data be retained for three years. This forces enterprises to establish a full-chain quality control system.
Supply Chain Management: A Critical Line of Defense in Enterprise Quality Competition
According to a report by China National Radio, the frequent problems in the power bank industry stem from safety issues caused by cost internalization. Many brand manufacturers rely on battery cell suppliers to ensure product quality by signing specification agreements and submitting samples for inspection, but this model is prone to oversights. Fierce price competition within the industry has led some manufacturers to use disassembled recycled battery cells or lower-quality batteries to reduce costs, resulting in uneven product quality.
For power bank companies that recently faced product quality issues, the problems were due to raw materials provided by suppliers—metal impurities mixed in during the production process, causing a very small number of products to overheat during use. In extreme scenarios, this could lead to combustion risks, posing safety hazards.
This power bank safety incident exposed common quality supervision loopholes in outsourced production models—supplier quality data is easily tampered with, and its authenticity cannot be guaranteed, leading to uncontrollable risks for the core company. When quality issues arise, the core company bears the cost.
This also serves as a warning to other enterprises: managing supplier product quality, establishing a comprehensive full-chain traceability mechanism, and avoiding the vicious cycle of "low-price bidding-cutting corners-safety risks" are essential. Only by efficiently ensuring end-to-end quality visibility, control, and predictability from source to delivery can product quality and safety be truly guaranteed.
Digital Quality Management: A Key Competitiveness for Future Success
The revision of new national standards and the tightening of certification mechanisms indicate that the industry is moving from the old era of "wild growth" to a new stage of "quality competition." An industry upgrade centered on safety is accelerating. Over the past decade, the power bank industry rapidly grew by riding the wave of smartphones; in the next decade, only enterprises that adhere to the quality lifeline will go further.
In this wave of industrial upgrading, quality management is undergoing a paradigm shift from "rule by people" to "rule by data"—"firefighting" and "fragmented" management will become history. The visibility, controllability, and predictability brought by digitalization are reshaping the industry landscape.
In this era where digital quality management has become a necessity for survival, Xiwicloud, as a trusted quality management partner for global leading advanced manufacturing enterprises, is helping clients achieve three key transformations: making silent data speak, turning passive quality control into proactive prevention, and transforming quality from a cost center into a profit center.
By covering quality data across the entire chain of R&D, production, supply, sales, and service, quality data silos are fundamentally avoided, enabling one-click traceability of quality issues and truly sustainable quality improvement.
Through a quality collaboration platform that spans the entire lifecycle and industry chain, a closed-loop quality management system from raw materials to end products is achieved, shifting from traditional "post-event firefighting" to "pre-event prevention and control."
Through deep quality collaboration, issues such as the inability to guarantee the authenticity of supplier quality data are avoided. Data-based scientific assessments of supplier quality capabilities are conducted, making supplier quality visible, controllable, and preventable. This prevents the core company from bearing the cost of supplier quality issues, achieving a win-win situation for the core company and the supply chain.
As the industry bids farewell to the traditional "firefighting" quality management model, enterprises that take the lead in building a digital quality moat will undoubtedly gain the ability to define the rules of the game in the new era.
Amid crisis lies opportunity, and the strong will remain strong. As regulatory measures are unsheathed, a new era centered on quality has arrived—this is not the end but a new starting point toward healthier, more sustainable, and high-quality development.
Xiwicloud is reshaping high-value supply chains for Chinese manufacturing.
