Quick Answer: On October 20, PrivateLTEand5G hosted a session on why Wi-Fi often fails industrial sites and how private 5G addresses those failures. The weak points differ by environment: noise and timing in manufacturing, mobility in warehouses and limited uplink capacity in ports. The case study came from Lufthansa Cargo’s warehouse at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), where a proof of concept (POC) on Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum produced a 70% process improvement, 55% of it from eliminating paper processes. Getting management to fund basic connectivity was the toughest step, and the team won approval by measuring time lost on the shop floor. For anyone building a private wireless business case, the measurement is the part most worth copying.
A warehouse with good Wi-Fi coverage recorded a 70% process improvement after trialing a private 5G network for its mobile devices. The site is Lufthansa Cargo’s facility at LAX, and its operations manager, Mario Schwarz, joined us on October 20 for “Making Industrial Connectivity Work: Manufacturing, Warehouses, Ports,” a PrivateLTEand5G session on why industrial wireless needs rethinking.
The session covered private 5G in plants, warehouses and ports before Schwarz walked through how his team measured what poor connectivity was costing, and what running a private network in a crowded airport radio environment involves.
We’d send anyone building a private wireless business case straight to the measurement. It shows which numbers from the warehouse floor persuaded management to fund basic connectivity, and how much of the final gain came from eliminating paper.
Three Environments, Three Ways Wi-Fi Breaks
Automation was our starting point: the more machines connect, the more manufacturing plants, warehouses, and ports depend on their wireless networks to keep working. Each of the three breaks existing Wi-Fi in its own way. Plants struggle with noise and timing, warehouses with mobility, and ports with limited uplink capacity. Table 1 lines each one up against what the session covered.
Table 1. Where existing wireless fails, by environment
| Environment | Where existing wireless fails | What the session covered |
| Manufacturing | Noise and timing | Reference deployments, including a cement plant in Portugal and one company’s rollout across 50 sites |
| Warehouses | Mobility | The full Lufthansa Cargo case study at LAX |
| Ports | Limited uplink capacity | Raised in our opening argument only, with no case presented |
We argued that private 5G can handle all three, with better coverage and uplink capacity, lower latency and stronger security. Among the reference deployments we cited were a cement plant in Portugal and one company’s rollout across 50 sites.
Then there is the money. Spectrum costs have to be weighed, and the use case must justify the spend. To our mind, getting stakeholders to sign off on the business justification is harder than the technology itself, and the Lufthansa Cargo case bore that out.
A Warehouse Where the Coverage Map Looked Fine
Schwarz and his team handle cargo at LAX, where large freighters have only 90 minutes to be loaded or unloaded. Forklifts are fitted with tablets and handheld scanners for workflow management, so the network has to serve devices that move around the floor.
Coverage in the warehouse was good. He described what went wrong anyway:
• Certificate-based security requirements caused roaming failures as devices moved between access points.
• High latency made the mobile devices slow to use.
• Workers documented tasks by hand and entered the data only at specific connection points, so few of the digital processes ever caught on.
Colleagues in Hamburg suggested trying a private cellular network. The team agreed to a POC on CBRS spectrum because defense companies and government institutions nearby already ran CBRS networks.
The POC ran from 2023 to 2024 and covered 100,000 square feet. It showed that devices could stay connected and roam across the site, and the workers liked it enough that some came up with their own uses for the network.
| PRO TIP: A Coverage Map Doesn’t Show RoamingSignal-strength surveys record readings at points on a floor plan, so a warehouse can pass one and still drop sessions as devices change access points. The places where workers stop to sync or re-enter data give a more direct picture of roaming trouble, and noting them costs little beyond time on the floor. |
A Private Wireless Business Case Built on Lost Minutes
Convincing management to invest in basic connectivity was the most difficult part of the project, Schwarz said. Until the team presented the data, the people approving budgets had little sense of how much time the connectivity problems were costing.
The case rested on a detailed shop-floor analysis covering:
• time lost whenever connectivity dropped
• paper processes against their digital alternatives
• the resulting cost savings
Connectivity and process efficiency both fed into the case, and the POC produced a 70% process improvement. Eliminating paper processes accounted for 55% of the gain.
Of everything presented, this breakdown is the number we found most useful. The way we read it, the network let a digital workflow run where the cargo is handled, and that workflow change delivered more than half of the gain.
| PRO TIP: Splitting the Paper Gain From the Network GainA single combined figure credits the network with gains the new workflow produced. Reporting the share from removing paper alongside the share from better connectivity gives management a claim it can test at the next site, and helps keep a site that has already dropped paper from expecting the same 70%. |
Operating in an Airport’s Crowded Airwaves
The radio environment at LAX is a difficult one, with Wi-Fi congestion, interference from radar systems and a dense mix of wireless networks sharing the same space. Defense facilities sit close by.
The network now in place uses 40 megahertz (MHz) of CBRS spectrum. Even in degraded conditions, at least 20 MHz remains available, enough for current needs such as scanning and cargo management. Lufthansa Industry Solutions, a fellow Lufthansa Group company, runs it as the managed service provider (MSP), an arrangement Schwarz singled out as important. Encryption is built in, and traffic is separated by access point name (APN) so that critical infrastructure takes priority over other applications. Table 2 sets out those operating decisions.
Table 2. Operating decisions at the warehouse
| Area | Decision | Detail from the session |
| Spectrum | 40 MHz of CBRS | At least 20 MHz remains in degraded conditions, enough for scanning and cargo management |
| Operations | Run by an MSP inside the Lufthansa Group | Stressed as important for network operations |
| Security | Built-in encryption | Part of the network itself |
| Traffic priority | Separate APNs | Critical infrastructure ahead of other applications |
| PRO TIP: Sizing Applications Against the Degraded FloorThe warehouse has 40 MHz to work with on a good day and at least 20 MHz in degraded conditions. Planning scanning, cargo systems and any new application against the lower figure means the critical workload still fits when conditions are at their worst. |
What the Network Is Being Asked to Carry Next
Now that basic connectivity works, the warehouse team has a longer list for the network, some of it under way and some further out:
• a POC for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) portal measurements
• sensor replacements
• push-to-talk applications
• automated vehicles, discussed as a future use case
The session ended on network slicing and application programming interfaces (APIs), and how they could tie the network more closely into digital operations.
Where Does This Leave You?
If you are a vendor or systems integrator, the Lufthansa Cargo experience suggests that a private wireless business case in a warehouse, plant or port stands a better chance when it rests on time losses measured on the buyer’s own floor. A shop-floor time study before any hardware proposal gives the customer a baseline in minutes lost to connectivity failures and time added by paper steps. A POC then shows the size of the process improvement and how much of it comes from removing paper. Who runs the network day to day belongs in the proposal from the first meeting. At LAX that job went to Lufthansa Industry Solutions, so an integrator pitching managed operations to a large enterprise may find itself competing with the customer’s own IT arm. If your team has a measured case like this one, the Executive Voice Program gives your executives a platform to present it, and the options under Partner With Us put it in front of our audience.
If you run IT or operational technology (OT) at an industrial site, start by finding where work stalls on your current network. Log the spots where devices drop their session or workers fall back to paper, how much time each one costs, and how paper steps compare with a digital version of the same task; figures like these won the budget for Schwarz’s team. When you reach the network itself, plan new applications around the bandwidth left in degraded conditions, and decide early which traffic gets priority. Our wireless self-audit, a 10-question scored self-assessment that takes about five minutes, is built for the stage before any vendor conversation. None of this is quick, and the floor data has to come first.
Frequently Asked Questions
A few points from the session didn’t fit above but will matter to anyone planning something similar.
Can CCTV cameras share the same CBRS network?
On video, Schwarz was cautious. A few closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras might work, but a larger deployment could consume the bandwidth that scanning and cargo management need in degraded conditions.
Does the private network replace Wi-Fi in the warehouse?
The site runs both. Operational traffic uses the private network, while Wi-Fi stays in place for administrative use. Keeping office traffic on Wi-Fi leaves the private network’s capacity for the scanners and forklift tablets on the floor.
Why run the trial at a busy airport instead of an easier site?
The team picked LAX because it was difficult. Wi-Fi interference and nearby defense facilities let them see how the network performs under a range of conditions. In our view, a result from a hard site also says more about how the network will cope elsewhere.
Why not rely on public cellular for mission-critical operations?
Public cellular came up as a risk for mission-critical work. As we see it, a warehouse that turns around large freighters in 90 minutes has little room for problems on a network shared with the general public.
