From the warehouse team’s perspective, how has the private 5G deployment changed daily operations and efficiency?
Speaker: Mario Schwarz, Operations Manager
Lufthansa Cargo: Introduction
From the warehouse team’s perspective, the private 5G deployment has significantly changed daily operations and efficiency.
The most important point for us is that digitalization and connectivity in the warehouse are not new topics. We’ve had digitalization and all related initiatives for many years. But the major challenge we always had in the past was connectivity.
Lufthansa Cargo: Past Connectivity Challenges
Our warehouse covers roughly 60,000 square feet in LAX, and we consistently faced connectivity issues—especially when roaming throughout the warehouse, moving from one side to the other, and dealing with blind spots.
This is critical for our operations because we move a lot of freight in a very short time. When a freighter arrives, we have a turnaround time of about 120 minutes to load and unload.
To put this into perspective: a standard 777 freighter has a capacity of about 150 metric tons. That means within those 120 minutes, we are moving close to 300 metric tons at maximum. As you can imagine, that’s a lot of movement in the warehouse.
We have relied on Wi-Fi for many years, but roaming between access points caused major issues. When a device roams from one access point to another, connectivity drops—especially with our main use case. We use handheld devices in the warehouse to track boxes and freight, and these devices rely heavily on our internal applications.
Because of security requirements, connectivity happens over secure, time-sensitive channels. So when roaming takes more than a few hundred milliseconds, you lose connectivity and must reestablish it.
Lufthansa Cargo: Operational Impact of Wi-Fi Roaming
Here’s the catch: once you lose connectivity, you must reauthenticate. Since we operate in a secure environment, workers need to reenter credentials to regain access.
This created significant overhead. For example, if someone is driving a forklift from point A to point B and loses connectivity, they have to stop, enter credentials, and only then regain access to the application.
You can imagine the impact this had on our processes.
How Private 5G Changed the Experience at Lufthansa Cargo
Private 5G changed this entirely. The connectivity now covers the entire 60,000 square feet—and with the apron included, more than 100,000 square feet.
We essentially have one big cell covering the whole area. That means:
- No roaming
- No dropping connections
- No reauthentication
- No interruptions
This gives us a system that is highly reliable.
Instant User Acceptance of Private 5G Network at Lufthansa Cargo
Because the system is so reliable, user acceptance was immediate. From the first minute our shop-floor workers used the new system, they recognized the improvement:
- “Now it’s working.”
- “I don’t have to relog.”
- “I don’t need to go back to paper.”
- “All the available numbers and freight information are already there.”
This led to very high acceptance. For us, this reliability was the main driver. Connectivity is the foundational layer for all operations and for all future digitalization initiatives built on top of it.
