i-PRO’s innovative approach to manufacturing

ISJ speaks with Adam Lowenstein, Director of Products, i-PRO Americas.

Do you feel the market understands who i-PRO is now and respects your Panasonic legacy or are you still educating people on the evolution?

We’ve certainly made progress with people understanding our Panasonic roots and how we’ve evolved as i-PRO. Panasonic is a big company, of course, with many divisions.

Physical security products were actually rolled up under the Toughbook laptop division back in the day at Panasonic.

Today, as a standalone company, i-PRO oversees its own destiny and has a laser focus on innovation in the physical security and public safety markets.

A lot of us came from Panasonic and that legendary Japanese quality runs deep in everything we do.

Our autonomy has enabled us to shorten R&D product cycles, ship products faster and become more competitive.

We’ve launched more than 100 new products since our inception as a new organisation and we’re not slowing down.

It’s rare to find a team this energised, so I think the word is now getting out quickly about who i-PRO is and how we are different.

How is i-PRO different from other camera manufacturers in the physical security space?

From a product standpoint, it goes back to the core technologies and strategies that we prioritise.

One differentiator is i-PRO’s open strategy, which is evident in our strategic partnerships with companies like Genetec and Milestone.

When it comes to providing unique object attributes about people and vehicles, we deliver more to a VMS than any other vendor.

We believe customers should be able to choose the right combination of technology from best-of-breed vendors that meet exact requirements.

Another difference would be our approach to edge AI processing.

We use Ambarella AI chips in our cameras because they are a pioneer and innovator for multiple AI applications across industries.

We want to bring as much processing to the edge as we can to make a truly efficient, decentralised surveillance solution.

This partnership enables us to develop products at the speed of innovation.

Companies that develop their own SoCs have longer development cycles and must sell a certain number of those chips to recoup investment before they can move forward with new innovations.

Our commitment to cybersecurity is also unique in that we have some of the best experts in the business working at i-PRO.

This ensures that i-PRO follows the latest NIST standards, like FIPS 140-2, and uses technology like an embedded secure element to safeguard customers with confidence.

Why should a company want to work with i-PRO?

We make our cameras smaller and lighter than our competitors because they want discreet designs that disappear into the background.

Part of bringing manufacturing back to Japan was to ensure even faster innovation by having engineering and R&D close to manufacturing.

This gives us TAA compliance for our products as well as NDAA, of course.

Another i-PRO core tenet is around time-based competition and efficiencies derived through component sharing across multiple products.

Our manufacturing is based on a modular design philosophy, which lets us share common components between products while also reducing the overall number of components.

This shortens lead time to develop and launch new, high-quality products while enabling us to manufacture products on demand and get them into the hands of our customers quickly.