How have staff responded to the shift from Wi-Fi to private 5G-enabled digital systems?
Speaker: Mario Schwarz, Operations Manager
Initial Adoption Challenges with Wi-Fi
I’m happy to answer that. As I pointed out earlier, Wi-Fi was not the best solution for us. The level we started from, in terms of acceptance, was pretty low. We always had to convince our warehouse workers—our shop floor workers—to use the scanners and tablets.
Because of the problems we had with Wi-Fi connectivity, which I explained earlier, we had many paper-based processes and workarounds in place.
Instant Acceptance with Private 5G
As soon as we had private 5G and the new connectivity in place, acceptance was instant. Workers immediately saw the benefits. They realized we were truly helping them speed up processes and make their work easier.
From that standpoint, adoption was extremely easy. The acceptance was almost immediate:
- “It’s working.”
- “It’s great.”
- “It’s perfect for us.”
- “We can finally use the tablets on the forklift.”
They hadn’t been able to do that for years. This led to a very high level of acceptance in a very short time. I’m not talking weeks—I’m talking days. As soon as we implemented it and the day shift started operations, the reaction was: “Oh wow, finally it works.”
Why It Clicked with the Workforce
It wasn’t about how sophisticated the technology is. Our shop floor workers are not technical people—they’re focused on doing their jobs efficiently. They’re not interested in technical specifications or how fancy the system is.
What matters to them is simple: it works. And the system worked from the first minute.
