Konica Minolta Selected as an Excellent Company in the “Covid-19 Response” Section (“Customer Care” Category) in the DX Survey 2021
Offering DX-Based Solutions to Social Challenges Arising from the Covid-19 Pandemic to Ensure Safety and Security of the Work Environment

Tokyo (June 7, 2021) – Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) today announced that it was selected as an excellent company in the “Customer care” category in the “Covid-19 response” section in the Digital Transformation Survey (DX Survey) 2021, conducted to recognize companies that excel at making strategic use of IT.

The “Covid-19 response” section was newly introduced in the DX Survey 2021, and its “Customer care” category is designed to assess how companies have built customer relationships after offering products and services, and to select companies that have made remarkable achievements in this regard.

Konica Minolta was selected in this section in recognition of its efforts to improve convenience for customers amid the Covid-19 pandemic through various approaches, such as extending its internal Covid-19 preventive measures to customers and developing services and products tailored to the demands of society, and to share these approaches widely with society as part of its business activities.

Backed by its proprietary imaging technologies, Konica Minolta has built a track record of satisfying customers’ hopes and desires to “see” and contributing to the well-being of society. The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way people work and live, and factors such as non-contact, decentralization and individualization have emerged as essential values for society. Konica Minolta boasts cutting-edge imaging and sensing technologies that can be effectively used to cater to these newly arising needs. With its remote, real-time and on-demand services as well as new technologies, the company has been delivering safety and security to customers’ workplaces and helping them address emerging social challenges.

Why Konica Minolta Was Selected

Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, Konica Minolta had built an environment conducive to remote work, which enabled it to quickly shift to working from home when the pandemic struck. A survey shows that 80% of the company’s employees have maintained or even increased productivity, while its employees’ office attendance rate has remained around 20–30% on average in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Leveraging the know-how of this internal practice, Konica Minolta developed a service to analyze customers’ workflows and visualize issues that must be overcome for customers to introduce DX into their business activities and shift to remote work. By providing optimal solutions, including introducing remote work, Konica Minolta aims to support customers in their fundamental work-style reforms to help them adopt diverse work-style options free from paperwork and time and space restrictions, and focus more on creative activities.

For workplaces that require physical attendance, Konica Minolta offers a thermal camera incorporating its imaging IoT technology that enables noncontact, real-time measurement of body surface temperature. Konica Minolta has also worked with its partner companies to develop the body surface temperature measurement, automatic face mask detection and face authentication solutions, which automatically detect and identify individuals who have a high body surface temperature and those who are not wearing a face mask, and help customers implement effective measures to prevent Covid-19. With these innovations, Konica Minolta is helping to ensure safe and secure access to and from offices and various other facilities and reduce the risk of spreading Covid-19, thus contributing to the prevention of infection.

For the healthcare market, Konica Minolta expanded the supply of ultra-portable digital X-ray imaging systems and diagnostic ultrasound systems, as well as pulse oximeters. To reduce the burden of nurses caring for Covid-19 patients, the company also launched the VS1 patient monitoring system after receiving prompt approval under the Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Act. The VS1 allows patients’ arterial oxygen saturation values, which indicate the severity of Covid-19, to be transmitted to the nurses’ station, located outside the isolated zone, via a sub-GHz wireless network, which has a lower risk of interfering with other systems, thus enabling centralized data management at the station. This system helps to improve hospital work efficiency and reduce the risk of contact with infection sources.