B2B technology trends for 2022

One of the great privileges of working for a company with more than 100 years of history is the ability to continue to learn from experience. We try to apply any wisdom gathered, as best we can, to current business challenges. There will no doubt be some difficult circumstances to navigate in 2022 with the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, a stretched global supply chain, rising core material prices and labour shortages. No-one can predict quite how these issues will play out but one thing I am very confident about is the ability of technology, combined with human ingenuity, to help address them.

Looking across our B2B interest areas, there are a number of important technology trends we see for the year ahead:

The continued automation of everything

The rapid development of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Robotics, Sensors and Cloud are super-charging the move to industry 4.0. These technological advances will continue to enable the automation of many aspects of business that to date have been unable to benefit from the cost efficiencies and productivity enhancements of automation.

In manufacturing, the automation of the production line will be extended to remaining areas still delivered by human operators. For example, in electronics production many processes have already been automated but the Final Assembly, Testing and Packaging areas (FATP) have mainly remained manual operations because of the difficulties in handling these larger and more awkward components. A combination of the latest robotics equipment and management software will enable this repetitive work to be replicated and even improved upon – allowing the workforce to be retrained and redeployed.

2022 will also see automation continue to expand further from the production line to  the factory floor with intelligent software in Manufacturing Execution Systems, such as Panasonic’s PanaCIM, helping to automate additional areas such as material management and traceability.

Mission critical applications become more mobile

Technology is also helping to improve the way our mobile key workers operate in areas such as the emergency services, defence, health and utilities – improving response times and efficiencies. In 2022, the latest rugged, connected and ergonomically designed mobile computing devices will continue to put mission critical applications in the hands of key workers where they are needed the most.

Panasonic TOUGHBOOK leads the market in Europe and this year the emergency services will be using its devices to connect to next generation Emergency Services Networks (ESN). Key workers will benefit from the speed and capabilities of the roll-out of 5G across Europe as well as further enhancements to remote device management, agile application development and bespoke vehicle dock solutions and accessories.

Significant progress in sustainable business

Sustainability will continue to rise on the priority lists of European businesses. As a company that has had a mission to contribute to society for more than 100 years, Panasonic is committed to helping to improve the global environment. This year we will continue to work tirelessly towards our commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030 (Scope 1 & 2) and carbon negative (Scope 3) by 2050.  

The evolution of Panasonic Connect

With the rapid changes in the business landscape and the technological advances we have already touched on in this article, Panasonic will also continue to evolve in 2022 to help our customers meet their goals. 

In October 2021, we launched Panasonic Connect Europe. Our agile new B2B organisation is designed to contribute to our customers’ success through the deployment of Product Solutions and Integrated Systems and Services.

The strength of our individual offerings from the Product Solution Business help our customers to succeed and we will continue to develop and improve the competitiveness of all our B2B products.

On the other hand, with the Integrated System and Service Business we aim to solve the business challenges of our customers by combining hardware and software, including those from outside of Panasonic, to create powerful new solutions. To realise this objective, we will accelerate our software collaborations with Blue Yonder, utilise all of Panasonic’s hardware capabilities and draw on any necessary 3rd party integration and hardware as required.

In April 2022, Panasonic Connect will be launched globally and here in Europe we look forward to helping many of our customers deliver on their goals in 2022. Whatever your business challenges, I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.