Lifting the lid on TOUGHBOOK’s rugged engineering innovations

Anyone who remembers the first mobile devices, will smile knowingly when I say that these first devices weren’t really very mobile. 

For a start, they were very heavy, had no stand-alone connectivity and often seemed to break if you just looked at them the wrong way. In essence, they were a limited version of a desktop device that could be moved outside. It was these early versions of mobile that really set Panasonic on its mission to provide something better for the blue-collar worker. 

The most vulnerable part of a mobile notebook is the LCD screen and that was our first objective. How to protect the screen better. The protection needed to be lightweight but stronger than plastic. After extensive research and testing it became clear that magnesium alloy was the answer. Still used in the device today, it was the perfect material to help make a mobile device rugged. 

It was the beginning of TOUGHBOOK. In many ways the beginnings of our rugged DNA that would filter through our devices for the next decades. 

The emergence of tablets and convertible devices in the consumer world also drove innovation. Businesses saw the lightweight form factor and versatility and wanted them for their workforce. But in the world of mobile workers, these devices were more vulnerable than ever. So, we set about bringing our rugged thinking to this form factor.

For example, the hinges on a consumer convertible device were good for around 10,000 open and closes. For our mobile workforce that needed to be a minimum of 100,000. We developed and tested the rugged hinges to this extreme standard and I’m delighted to say that we had zero reports of failure.

When it came to rugged tablets, we quickly realized that the slate approach, with a larger screen, was not going to be sensible for many mobile workers. The sweet spot was a 10-inch screen. It delivered that fine balance of screen size for easy viewing, in a device that was lightweight enough to be held in one hand for long periods, with a battery life that would work for a full shift.

But the biggest obstacle to overcome for tablets in the mobile workforce was the screen itself. Consumer tablets in bright sunlight were almost impossible to see and touchscreens almost impossible to use when it rained. Our innovation came in the form of a screen that was bright enough to be seen clearly even on the sunniest days and an auto-detect touchscreen that would ignore rain and recognise input from a bare or gloved hand or pen.

So, where does it all end? 

Well, we already have the lowest rugged device failure rates in the industry but our ultimate goal would be zero failures and zero unscheduled downtime. It may seem a pipedream but our entire approach is built around this goal. In making it a reality, quality must be a habit, not an event. We are obsessive about capturing every learning from every iteration of our devices and adding it to our TOUGHBOOK engineering bible.

It's that continuous improvement that will ultimately lead to achieving our goal and for me, as an engineer, that achievement will be the ultimate in rugged innovation.