Arnulf Betzold GmbH Increases e-Commerce Capacities with Automated Carton Warehouse  

The project

The latest automation project is Betzold’s response to changing customer demands and evolving order structures. A steady increase of incoming orders and a modified consignment structure meant that Betzold needed to take action. Ongoing growth in e-Commerce and subsequent development towards a wider product range have led to increased access frequency and more deliveries of smaller shipments with fewer boxes. The inventory system, shuttle warehouse and replenishment from Betzold’s high-bay warehouse (HBW) would no longer be able to meet this changing demand in the long term.

The highly experienced FORTNA team has worked with the talented Betzold team to continually look ahead to identify the potential next steps in logistics expansion so that the company is well positioned to react swiftly to order processing parameters in an ever-changing market. FORTNA developed an intralogistics concept to increase performance levels by integrating innovative software and modern technologies, maximizing both long-term efficiency and flexibility for changing needs in e-Commerce. 

Innovative software increases performance and flexibility

Conveyor technology then guides the cartons directly to storage in the automated carton warehouse or to the container filling station, which automatically supplies the neighboring shuttle warehouse. The remaining items are initially stored on pallets in the reserve HBW.  As soon as items in the automatic carton warehouse need to be restocked, replenishment is requested from the reserve HBW.  A newly introduced WCS is used to manage the material flow, including storage location selection. The warehouse control system classifies cartons according to their dimensions and sends feedback to the warehouse management system (WMS) regarding their status, target aisle and storage location within the automated carton warehouse. For goods retrieval, the WMS transfers the order to the WCS, which summarizes individual orders in batches and forwards the required target coordinates to the storage and retrieval machines, prioritizing them accordingly, and thereby achieving the highest possible level of workload fulfillment.