Panasonic Group used CES 2026 in Nevada, US, to present supply chain management offerings from Blue Yonder and Hussmann. The company said it is expanding a business centered on integrated SaaS supply chain management, combining AI-supported planning software with store-level refrigeration and monitoring systems. The aim is to improve exception handling, visibility and operational continuity across food retail supply chains.
Blue Yonder said its software helps operations teams respond to disruptions such as shipping delays, stockouts and sudden demand shifts by generating response options. The company said data from demand planning, supply planning, warehouse management and transportation management is used on its Blue Yonder Cognitive Solutions platform, with suppliers and carriers connected in an end-to-end network. Edge devices, including robots, computer vision, RFID and RF terminals, voice and augmented reality, are used to capture field data and pass it to AI agents.
Hussmann presented StoreConnect, an IoT-based remote monitoring and refrigeration management system for food retail stores. The company said the system collects and analyzes equipment data to detect early warning signs of malfunction, helping reduce emergency dispatch calls and improve the allocation of maintenance resources. Hussmann also said retailers on average achieved more than a 30% reduction in refrigerant leaks within their first year.
At CES 2026, Hussmann also showed refrigerated and frozen food display cases using R290 and its Aperion electronic shelf label system. The company said the shelf label system allows immediate price updates at the shelf edge and integrates real-time data with a store’s e-commerce platform to support online order picking. Panasonic Group also said Blue Yonder is using the group’s camera image recognition technology in yard management at logistics hubs, where cameras capture trailer identification numbers for shipment tracking.
“There are a lot of challenges—a lot of what we see in the supply chain are exceptions to the norm,” said Matt Wagner, Blue Yonder’s Mobility and Automation Team. Sarah Greenwood, Senior Vice President of Connected Solutions at Hussmann, said StoreConnect differs from traditional monitoring systems through “its ability to provide actionable insights by collecting and analyzing extensive data to be more predictive when detecting early warning signs of malfunction.”
