FORTNA develops an intralogistics concept to increase performance levels by integrating innovative software and modern technologies, maximising both long term efficiency and flexibility for changing needs in e-Commerce.

Arnulf Betzold GmbH (Betzold), based in Ellwangen, Southern Germany, is the market leader in the DACH region for teaching and learning materials and partnered with FORTNA with the planning and implementation of a fully automated carton warehouse as part of an ongoing expansion initiative for their existing intralogistics.

The concept consists of four aisles, 80,000 storage locations, new automated in- and outgoing goods processes, integration of a new warehouse control system (WCS) and conveyor technology to connect to inventory logistics. The state-of-the-art system was launched in May 2025 and is capable of handling 520 double cycles per hour.

The latest automation project is the company's response to changing customer demands and evolving order structures. A steady increase in 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 our high-bay warehouse (HBW) would no longer be able to meet this changing demand in the long term," explains Ulrich Betzold, Managing Director of Arnulf Betzold GmbH. "FORTNA has provided us with expert advice on our ongoing automation strategy for many years and has once again developed a concept for our logistics that uses modern technology to deliver both greater capacity in the warehouse and dynamic processing."

Increased storage capacity and improved efficiency of incoming goods processes

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.

"The new intralogistics solution includes the construction of a fully automated carton warehouse with 80,000 storage locations, which was added to the existing shuttle warehouse," says Andreas Spitzki, FORTNA, Sr. Manager Solution Design. "The newly designed incoming goods area was fully automated. Before entering the carton storage pre-zone, classification is analysed by volume and weight. Only cartons that need to be processed manually due to their size or weight are ejected - the rest can be put into storage automatically."

All mail-order cartons are automatically labelled in machine-readable form and captured in real time by highly sensitive OCR vision technology with AI-supported error correction. An intelligent camera sensor system recognises the many variations in label design and automatically converts any discrepancies to the required standard.

Conveyor technology then guides the cartons directly to storage in the automated carton warehouse or to the container filling station, which automatically supplies the neighbouring 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.

Innovative software increases performance and flexibility

A newly introduced WCS is used to manage the material flow, including storage location selection. As Eric Wäbs, FORTNA, Sr. Consultant Solution Design, explains: "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 in the automated carton warehouse."

For goods retrieval, the WMS transfers the order to the WCS, which summarises individual orders in batches and forwards the required target coordinates to the storage and retrieval machines, prioritising them accordingly and thereby achieving the highest possible level of workload fulfilment.

Ulrich Betzold states, "With up to 520 storage and retrieval operations per hour, our new system delivers a significant performance boost. In close consultation with FORTNA, we are already looking at future automation and robotics solutions to optimise the internal material flow so that we can stay competitive in the long term and ensure flexibility and scalability.”