Ensuring Quality at Speed in Complex Fulfillment Environments
How AI Helps to Eliminate Errors in Logistics
End customers no longer choose between speed and quality. They expect both. Especially in industries such as beauty or fashion, where product presentation and completeness directly impact brand perception, there is no room for errors. This expectation defines our standard. As a 3PL partner, operational excellence, precision, and reliable execution are core elements of Arvato’s value proposition. The challenge lies in meeting these expectations in increasingly complex and high-speed environments.
At our logistics site in Hamm, we manage a highly dynamic omnichannel fulfillment operation for a beauty client with 32 picking workstations and 128 target locations. A wide variety of products, order structures, and packaging types move through a continuous outbound flow. Orders can include mixed items, non-rigid products, stacked configurations, or additional materials such as leaflets.
Ensuring accuracy in these conditions typically requires extra time. This creates a fundamental tension: maintaining quality risks slowing down operations, while prioritizing speed can increase the likelihood of errors.
The Challenge: Managing Complexity Without Compromising Speed or Quality
While throughput is already highly optimized, quality assurance becomes increasingly difficult as complexity grows. Manual visual checks are reliable but do not scale in high-speed environments. Traditional systems such as weight-based verification struggle with mixed orders, lightweight items, and variable packaging. As a result, quality control risks becoming a bottleneck.
For Arvato, this is not an acceptable trade-off.
- The objective is clear: ensure maximum order accuracy in complex scenarios without slowing down operations or simplifying processes.
The Solution:
AI-Powered Visual Quantitative Verification Embedded in the Process
To address this challenge, we implemented Spot by Nomagic, an AI-powered visual quantitative verification system designed for complex fulfillment environments. Installed above conveyor lines, Spot captures images of every order as it passes through. Its AI models, trained on millions of SKUs, accurately count items, even when they are stacked or overlapping, partially hidden, flexible or non-rigid or combined with non-order materials.
Through direct integration with the warehouse management system, results are instantly matched against expected order data. Any discrepancies are flagged immediately without interrupting the flow. Quality control becomes an integral part of the process, not an additional step.
What differentiates the solution is that Spot is not a traditional visual inspection tool that simply identifies objects in a picture. Instead, it combines AI-powered computer vision with operational warehouse intelligence. The system does not only “see” orders — it understands quantities, confirming the right count and flags errors. This transforms quality assurance from a manual control task into an intelligent, scalable process capability. For clients, this means higher fulfillment reliability, even fewer customer complaints, reduced returns, and a consistently high-quality customer experience even in highly dynamic, high-complexity fulfillment environments. At the same time, operations teams can focus their expertise where it creates the most value: resolving true exceptions instead of manually checking every shipment.
From Bottleneck to Scalable Capability
By embedding AI directly into the material flow, we remove the traditional trade-off between speed, accuracy, and complexity. Quantitative Verification no longer requires additional time or manual effort. Instead, it runs automatically at conveyor speed while handling the full diversity of products and order types. At the same time, the system continuously improves. A structured feedback loop enables the AI to learn from real warehouse scenarios and every scanned item, refine its understanding of edge cases, and adapt to changing assortments.
Implementation in Hamm: Seamless Integration into Live Operations
This challenge becomes particularly visible in high-volume omnichannel environments. At our Hamm site, six Spot stations were installed above conveyors and fully integrated into the existing workflow. Each outbound order is verified automatically in real time via REST API connection to the warehouse management system. The solution operates in the background and integrates seamlessly into existing processes.
The implementation delivers measurable impact:
- Around 2,200 verifications per hour on average
- More than 4,500 verifications per hour at peak
- 95% of orders cleared automatically with quantitative verification, only 5% require targeted human review
Instead of checking every order manually, operations teams can focus only on the small fraction where complexity leads to potential errors.
Business Impact: Quality at Speed Becomes Scalable
The results translate directly into client value:
- Consistent order accuracy without slowing down fulfillment
- Reliable handling of complex product and order structures
- Reduced returns and reshipments
- Less manual effort
- Targeted use of workforce, focusing on exceptions
- Improved customer satisfaction through error-free deliveries
Arvato ensures that speed and quality are no longer competing priorities, but part of the same scalable system.
Building the Foundation for Physical AI
The deployment of Spot marks an important step toward integrating AI directly into physical operations. By enabling systems to analyze real-world scenarios in real time, Arvato is building the foundation for more intelligent, adaptive logistics processes.
Developed in close collaboration with our technology partner Nomagic, whose order-picking robot is implemented at our site in Dortmund, the solution demonstrates how targeted AI deployment can unlock real operational value in environments where complexity, speed, and quality intersect. Ultimately, the technology delivers what matters most: reliable end-customer satisfaction.
