Borgholzhausen, May 26, 2025 – Corrugated cardboard and packaging manufacturers are facing two key challenges: growing article quantities and article diversity. This article uses the example of the corrugated board, paper and packaging industry to illustrate how automated storage systems create maximum flexibility for volatile markets, fluctuating raw material prices and company growth, both in terms of equipment and software. It can be transferred to other markets such as food, beverages or contract logistics. Satellite® storage systems are also widely used there.
Increasing goods traffic and growing online trade are driving the production and variety of corrugated cardboard and corrugated cardboard packaging. This is because they can be produced in many formats, protect goods, are fully recyclable and promote sales.
Traditional warehouse logistics for corrugated board is manual. Paper rolls, format goods or processed finished goods are stored in huge areas - either in block storage or, semi-automated, in long rows on ground-level conveyor belts. The storage height of the goods is limited by the access height of forklifts. As soon as variety and quantity increase, additional forklifts and material paths are required to handle the increasing and logistically more complex material paths.
Manual corrugated cardboard warehouses inevitably have to expand. Existing warehouse logistics reach their limits in terms of space and logistics. More errors creep in with manual operation. Forklift transport of heavy paper rolls or stacks involves risks.
How to store the bandwidth then? New space is expensive. In addition to the price of new commercial space and the construction costs of new halls, there are environmental regulations and compensation costs for additional sealed areas. Moreover, sealing new commercial space only contributes to the sustainable image of corrugated cardboard manufacturers if intralogistics is centered there and this warehouse hub replaces many small, scattered warehouse locations. This is the only way to unseal areas elsewhere, save operating costs, reduce transport kilometers between locations and CO2 emissions.
Automation: What it can do today
Automation was a consequence of these challenges. Since the 1950s, globalization and ongoing competitive pressure have been driving the rapid development of automation technologies in intralogistics - both in systems and control systems as well as in software development. Nevertheless, pioneering systems were limited in their possibilities and were considered inflexible and costly to modernize.
This has changed fundamentally: Modern automated warehouse systems are open to the future and modular, designed for expansion and the gradual, consistent and continuous automation of other areas.
Sensor technology and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) mean that transfer cars, vertical transfer units or storage and retrieval machines (SRMs) can be adapted quickly and economically to different loads, formats and storage strategies. Early SRMs were ceiling-guided - modern SRMs are floor-guided, making them more stable and faster. Thanks to their design, improved drives and sensor technology, they are lighter, more precise and more energy-efficient.
In addition to large constructions for warehouses up to 50 meters high, they are becoming increasingly compact: automation for heavy, bulky loads has long been possible even in existing warehouses with a low load input. They are therefore also suitable for the economical warehouse expansion of SMEs.
Intermediate storage is no longer limited to flat block storage, but is strategically possible at any point in the corrugator or in the production process thanks to precisely tailored cuts, with maximum capacity on a minimum footprint. Format goods are stored from the floor to the hall ceiling. Access heights for forklifts are no longer the upper limit, but the requirements of high-performance production are decisive. With good planning and implementation, backlogs at the interface between production and storage are no longer an issue.
Open-format shelving systems and variable center blocks
But what should racking systems and warehouse layouts have to offer in order to make automation as profitable as possible? The East Westphalian intralogistics automation specialist Westfalia Technologies, which has been helping to drive warehouse automation forward since 1971, has added two further solutions to its pioneering answer of Satellite® technology and multi-deep storage channels: several channels per shelf compartment and variable storage center blocks without rigid boundaries, which can fully serve the SRMs from two sides.
Multiple channels per shelf compartment significantly expand the storage strategies and capacity for a large number of items and a variety of different formats, including bulky ones. These can be stored lengthwise or crosswise in several channels on several rail profiles. These profiles provide additional support for pallets or stacks and thus prevent damage to pallets and corrugated cardboard stacks.
The options for combining and mixing different formats in shelving compartments and the channels grouped together in them increase with the variable center blocks between two storage aisles. These provide redundancy for uninterrupted systems. If an individual SRM, the associated storage aisle and storage zone are temporarily blocked for maintenance, the goods can continue to be stored, transferred and retrieved via the other storage aisle. Without a rigid, central block boundary, the storage lanes can also be divided as required between the adjacent storage aisles.
If the system meets all the requirements for compact storage of different formats and high loads, the question of flexibility and new storage strategies is shifted entirely to the software. Short-term adjustments can be implemented much more quickly here than when converting a rigid racking system that is limited to a few applications. The open-format physical storage matrix creates the “playing field” for all necessary storage algorithms. This includes solutions that the company does not even need today - it is thus prepared for many conceivable formats and can plan flexibly.
Westfalia's Warehouse Execution System Savanna.NET® maps the warehouse topology completely digitally. Warehouse management and warehouse controlling run completely under one hood, as required. Alternatively, the software can supplement existing material flows with the warehouse management functionalities required for the warehouse and the specialized control of the warehouse technology. Savanna.NET® determines route-optimized warehouse movements and the optimal storage location assignments, depending on predefined goods parameters, and executes them - depending on the orders transmitted by the ERP.
Playful storage with multidimensional compartment management
The game changer for strategic, stock-accurate warehouse management is multidimensional compartment management with Savanna.NET®. It takes into account large differences in the dimensions of load units in order to store them in a highly compact way: like a round of Tetris, but automatically.
Different load widths are accommodated and combined in one compartment via several channels. Storage locations are optimally occupied to make maximum use of the space. And arranged in such a way that the system can access the load units directly in good time for production or route provision as required. Each compartment has several channels, both physically and on the Savanna interface. Savanna.NET® takes into account storage strategies, dimensions, overhangs and approach heights in its multi-dimensional compartment management and SRM control.
The WES manages a wide range of storage location combinations and SU constellations and controls the rational, route-optimized dispensing and picking of all goods and goods groups in the compartments. The maximum number of variants extends across shelves and entire storage blocks. The advanced warehouse logic ensures optimum utilization.
Optimal stock levels in every raw materials, format goods or finished goods warehouse are no longer an “estimate”. WES determines them dynamically on the basis of precise warehouse data. It enables the cost-effective purchase of raw materials in stock and time-delayed production with minimal set-up times. The perfectly managed storage capacities along the entire production line for raw materials, semi-finished and finished goods make this possible.
Load handling attachments take on high-performance corrugators
Provided it is equipped with the appropriate multiple Satellites, the WES initiates the necessary multiple transportation - for example, the transportation of individual load units (SUs), two SUs next to each other, one behind the other or four SUs in two pairs. The capacity of a storage and retrieval machine can be increased even further with the appropriate Satellite® equipment.
Transports are therefore bundled in order to connect high-performance productions and realize all combinations in rack compartments. Sensitive goods - such as still moist semi-finished and format goods - can even be stored without pallets, transported quickly and stably thanks to Lift Satellites. The Satellite® load handling attachment is now available in an unprecedented range of variants for multiple transports and unusual formats. It is ideal wherever heavy loads in many formats need to be moved and stored.
Westfalia's Warehouse Execution System helps with safe and speedy storage, transfer and retrieval. For route provisioning, the software sequences goods appropriately, i.e. makes them available for loading in the correct order. In every phase of production and storage, automated material flows help to make components and goods available with pinpoint accuracy - via the shortest route and with a significantly lower risk of accidents than in comparable manual warehouse systems. Warehouse logistics is no longer growing in areas, but vertically.
Dynamic depth of information in real time
As standard, Savanna.NET® brings a high depth of information to the screen on request. Operators use a dynamic grid that filters and sorts information, displays article and pallet details, fill levels or movements of the load units just as clearly as logs from the exchange with upstream systems for production planning (PPS) or enterprise resource planning (ERP). The system assists with all work steps in which people are still involved. System statuses and stock levels in internal logistics can be called up at any time and also checked remotely.
The days of inflexible automatic pioneer systems are therefore history: Anyone who uses Savanna.NET® and an automated storage system from Westfalia to store corrugated cardboard and products made from corrugated cardboard is using the Tetris principle on “autopilot”. Or, metaphorically speaking: Packaging and its placement in the warehouse simply change with the cell phone models of the season. Anyone investing in automation today is acting in a highly economical manner.
