JapanManufacturing2023 – ongoingPanasonic Connect
ConnectAI in-house generative AI assistant
Panasonic Connect's in-house AI assistant saved an estimated 788,000 work hours in its third year
Problem
Panasonic Connect, the B2B solutions company of the Panasonic group, wanted to raise office productivity and build AI skills among staff. It also wanted to stop employees from using unsanctioned public AI tools with company data.
Approach
In February 2023 the company launched ConnectAI, its own assistant built on large language models (first OpenAI models via Microsoft Azure, later also Google and Anthropic models), for about 12,000 employees in Japan. It added a product-quality Q&A function in 2024 and built a "Panasonic Connect Corpus" that links data from about 50 internal systems. From 2025 it tested task-specific AI agents in accounting, legal and marketing, and a manufacturing agent that checks drawings against design specifications went into use in February 2026.
Results
Takeaway
The company estimated yearly savings of about 186,000, 448,000 and 788,000 hours as staff handed whole tasks to AI and connected internal data. It addressed weak answers on recent internal information by integrating data, without replacing the model; all hour figures are its own estimates.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Business function
- Internal work and knowledge managementIT and R&D
- Innovation type
- Process innovationOrganization and ways of working
- AI technology
- Generative AIAI agents
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
The company reports that ConnectAI saved about 788,000 work hours in fiscal 2025, roughly double the year before and equal to 3.4% of total working hours. It cites about 3.61 million uses, about 33 minutes saved per use and a monthly user rate of 61% among about 11,800 domestic employees. It describes a data platform linking about 50 internal systems, a drawing-check agent in use since February 2026, and a goal of cutting total working hours by 10% by 2030.
Panasonic Connect reports 448,000 work hours saved in 2024, 2.4 times the previous year, from about 2.4 million uses averaging 28 minutes saved each. It says staff shifted from asking the assistant questions to delegating tasks such as coding, manuals and document review. It lists agent trials in accounting, legal and marketing.
MONOist reports the company's first-year results, with about 186,000 hours saved from June 2023 to May 2024 for about 12,400 employees and roughly 20 minutes saved per use. It notes that the assistant could not reliably answer questions about the latest internal information and that answer accuracy could not be guaranteed. It also reports no information leaks or copyright problems in the first 16 months.
Full details are in the original sources.