Ocado refreshes tech and strategy

This is in response to the challenge of both Q-Commerce companies who are offering extremely fast (15 mins in some cases) grocery deliveries in dense urban settings, and micro-fulfilment hubs which are much faster to roll out than the centralised, large fulfilment centre model favoured by Ocado.

Innovations include the 600 Series bot - said to be the world’s lightest and most efficient grocery fulfilment bot: lighter grids; and robotic arms that pick groceries directly from the grid.

The company claims these innovations will allow Ocado Group and partners to install the platform faster and in simpler, highly optimised, more cost-effective buildings, requiring lower capex, with a faster time to go-live. In addition, partners will be able to achieve greater throughput from the same or smaller footprint, lower labour costs, and address labour shortage challenges.

Partners ordering standard-sized CFCs today for delivery in H2 2023 will have the following features enabled: 600 Series bots; the 600 grid and Optimised Site Design; Automated Frameload; On-grid Robotic Pick; Ocado Swift Router; and Ocado Flex.

Orders made prior to the launch of Ocado Re:Imagined for delivery at the end of FY23 can be retrofitted to include many of these enhancements.

In detail, the enhancements are:

The 600 Series bot is built using additive manufacturing, with more than half of its parts 3D printed. It is said to be cheaper to build and operate than its predecessor, more energy efficient, and high performing. The 600 Series bot has continual software updates and on-demand parts which means higher utilisation of each bot. The lighter bot unlocks a cascade of benefits for optimised CFC design. This will enable the reimagined Ocado Smart Platform to be installed into simpler, more cost-effective buildings, as well as in micro fulfilment centres near the customer.

The 600 grid and optimised site design. The lightweight design of 600 Series bot allows Ocado to build lighter grids, faster. These new grids can be built in parallel, taking weeks rather than months to install and at a lower cost. Because the 600 Series bots are highly energy efficient and require a lot less power to achieve the same throughput from the same footprint, new sites will require less chill equipment, lowering energy consumption levels and overall construction costs. The dramatic reduction in material used for lighter grids makes site design easier, and allows for simpler buildings, reducing the timelines and costs associated with the construction of purpose-built facilities.

Automated Frameload. This process automates the loading of totes with ready-for-delivery customer orders onto delivery frames ready for dispatch, replacing the manual process currently in place. The automation of this process leads to lower labour costs and higher productivity per employee.

On-grid Robotic Pick. This process automates the picking and packing of customer orders directly from the grid. For this to work in grocery, robotic arms need to be able to pick tens of thousands of products of varying shapes, sizes, weights, and fragility and pack them densely in bags with human precision and accuracy. Ocado Group has developed the technologies - machine vision, deep reinforcement learning and advanced sensing - which are required to pick and pack grocery items in a highly efficient and cost  effective way without any prior knowledge of what those products are. The benefits of On-grid Robotic Pick include lower labour costs; reduced footprint; higher throughput in the fulfilment centre; optimisation of warehouse design leading to lower construction costs; and the ability to automate stock consolidation during off-peak hours as a key enabler for Ocado Orbit and consolidate stock better in off-peak periods.  

Ocado Orbit: the world's first Virtual Distribution Centre. One of the advantages of OSP is that it does not require a network of regional distribution centres to deliver products to the fulfilment centre. Product is brought by the manufacturer to the CFC directly. Manufacturers only find this cost-effective, however, when they can deliver products in sufficiently large quantities. Under the current model, this means that CFCs need to be a certain minimum size to achieve the necessary economics for suppliers. Ocado Orbit addresses this challenge by creating a system whereby multiple smaller footprint warehouses share a "virtual distribution centre", which will use the latest software in AI and Machine Learning, in a seamless supply ecosystem. Each warehouse acts as a primary supply hub for a fraction of the stock but all have access to the combined range, offering their customers the choice of a large range. Ocado Orbit enables smaller fulfilment centres, closer to the customer, to be able to offer a large range, short lead times, and value simultaneously.  

Ocado Swift Router is an innovation by Ocado Group that enables delivery of last minute, short lead time orders as well as larger, longer lead-time orders, all from the same van. This means that partners need no longer make a trade-off between the benefits of short lead time orders and a today-for-tomorrow service and customers can have choice, value and lead times that work for them all together for the first time.

Ocado Flex means that partners can use their own webshop and app solutions while taking advantage of OSP. As a result, they no longer need to write-off historic investment in their webshop to be able to benefit from OSP's market-leading customer proposition.

For more information, visit www.ocadogroup.com