STADLER reshapes knowledge work at a 230-year-old company
STADLER, a 230‑year‑old family‑owned waste‑sorting firm, has embedded OpenAI’s ChatGPT across its 650‑person global workforce to accelerate knowledge work. Since 2023, the company mandates AI use for all computer‑based tasks, deploying over 125 custom GPTs for translation, email, and documentation. The rollout combined employee experimentation with leadership‑provided access, training, and guardrails. Results include 30‑40% time savings on routine tasks, a 2.5× faster first‑draft speed, and over 85% daily active usage. The company now plans to integrate AI agents into core workflows for automated data gathering, output generation, validation, and approval routing.
The Core Development
STADLER is a family-owned company with more than 230 years of history, specializing in automated waste sorting plants for the global recycling industry. With over 650 employees operating worldwide, the company plays a critical role in helping countries advance their sustainability and circular economy goals.
Under the leadership of Co-CEO Julia Stadler, the company has taken a forward-looking approach to modernization—embedding AI into everyday work as a core productivity layer. Since 2023, STADLER has pursued a clear principle: every employee working on a computer should use AI to improve speed, quality, and collaboration.
STADLER adopted OpenAI's ChatGPT to remove this friction, selecting it for its output quality, speed, and immediate usability.
Real-World Use Cases & Applications
The rollout combined bottom-up experimentation with top-down support. Employees were encouraged to explore use cases, while leadership provided company-wide access, training, and clear guardrails.
2.5x faster time to first draft on average, with up to 6x acceleration in high-volume use cases like social media
Deployment & Availability
Engineering & data teams use it for analysis, code support, and performance evaluation
Strategic Perspective & Ecosystem Impact
After evaluating alternatives, ChatGPT consistently delivered more structured, context-aware, and practically useful results. Just as importantly, it enabled immediate value—teams could start generating usable outputs from day one.
Project and management teams use custom GPTs to structure processes and improve documentation
Marketing teams translate complex technical knowledge into clear global communication
Why it matters
STADLER’s large‑scale, industry‑specific AI adoption demonstrates how legacy manufacturing firms can rapidly boost productivity and cognitive work through custom GPTs, informing similar transformations across sectors.