EP 188: Panasonic at ProMatDX 2021

Posted on Jun 24, 2021 in Podcasts

Kevin Lawton

In this episode, I was joined by Jim Dempsey of Panasonic. Jim is the Director of US Business Development and Partnerships at Panasonic North America specifically focusing on their mobility solutions. Jim and I connected at ProMatDX to discuss some of their latest technologies in the warehousing space, their projection sortation system, and what future problems they are trying to solve.

Key Takeaways

Panasonic is certainly a well-known technology company throughout the world and as Jim states, they are certainly known for Blu-ray players and CD players but he actually says that their B2B business is actually the largest percentage of their business. We talk about the pandemic’s impact on the overall demand in the omnichannel space and how Panasonic is helping companies keep up. Jim discusses how they are really focusing on the smart edge and where the transactions are really happening. They enable the smart edge by providing devices that allow you to be mobile like their TOUGHBOOK series and also helping to ensure that these companies are secure from a network standpoint.
We also dive into the increased visibility into environmental impacts in the supply chain. With the adoption and increased accessibility to artificial intelligence and machine learning, there is so much more that can be predicted and prevented. Jim gives some great examples of how a supply chain can feel a ripple effect that they may not be prepared for. One of the best examples is of a social media influencer posting about a product and it goes viral or gets a lot of great feedback causing a spike in demand for that item. Jim tells us how some technology out there can actually pick up on this to get your supply chain ahead and meet the demand.
When looking at Panasonic’s ProMatDX2021 showcase their Visual Sort Assist solution really caught my attention. They had a customer who was experiencing difficulty with their sortation process and having new hires struggling to remember zip codes and other sortation criteria. What they came up with was a combination of scanning and projection. The system picks up the label of the box and is then able to project an image on top of the box which indicates to the employee which boxes to grab. It is a really cool solution and a great visual management tool.