John Deere is integrating 5G into their Quad Cities facilities. The manufacturing giant won an auction from the Federal Communications Commission to implement 5G in its production lines.
Craig Sutton is in charge of Deere's manufacturing innovation. He says 5G will allow the company to expand past previous limitations.
"That is kind of the future of manufacturing. We're very excited about it. We want to change the mindset that manufacturing's the old, you know, the dirty smoke stacks and the dingy areas, I mean, it's a really cool environment, right?"Sutton says automation won't take workers' jobs — it will make them easier."We can make quicker and better decisions. We can move people to the right positions. We can predict machine failures. We can stay in front of any machine that might be having a performance issue. We actually see things like automation as a way to augment work, and then let the people, the highly-skilled people, do the work that they're skilled at doing." John Deere will begin laying the groundwork to switch to 5G early this upcoming year, with a complete rollout expected within 12-14 months.
