| Job on the shop floor | Stores stock in a dense grid and brings it to a station for order picking |
|---|---|
| Where it works | A dedicated area behind or beside the store, or a separate fulfilment centre |
| Moves product? | Yes, inside its own grid; not on the sales floor |
| Works around shoppers? | No: fenced off from shoppers |
| Where it stands today | Commercial at large scale; licensed to grocers on several continents |
| Main limit | Needs space and construction, fixed capacity, and does nothing for the shelves shoppers see |
What it does
- Robots run on top of a grid of stacked bins and bring the bin holding an item to a port, where it is picked into an order by a person or a robotic arm.[12]
- At the large end, Ocado licenses its automated fulfilment platform to grocers including Casino, Sobeys, Kroger and Coles.[11]
Strengths
Limits
- A building project: it needs floor space, power and installation, and its capacity is fixed once built.
- Holds its own inventory, separate from the shelves, so stock must be split between the grid and the store.
- Concentrated risk: a 2019 fire at Ocado's Andover fulfilment centre, caused by a fault in a battery charging unit, took the site out of action until 2021.[11]
- Does nothing for on-shelf availability, restocking or stock rotation on the sales floor.
Where it stands today
- Commercial products such as AutoStore list grocery as a core industry; Ocado's platform runs for grocers in Europe, North America and Australia.[12][11]
Examples
Ask before you buy
- How many orders a day does my demand need, and does this size match it?
- What share of my range (fresh, frozen, bulky) can the grid hold?
- What happens to orders if the system is down?
Jobs it takes on
- Order picking for online grocery: Collecting the items for online orders, from the store's shelves or from a dedicated store of stock.
Other types
- Humanoid restocking, stock rotation and order picking
- Shelf-scanning robots
- Floor-cleaning and hazard-spotting robots
- Delivery and pickup robots
- In-store picking robots
Sources
Every numbered claim on this page links here. Open the source to check it.
- Ocado (Wikipedia)Ocado Smart Platform licensed to Casino, Sobeys, Kroger and Coles; 2019 fire at the Andover fulfilment centre caused by a fault in a battery charging unit.
- AutoStore: grocery and retail automated storage and retrieval (AutoStore)Cube storage system of robots on a grid, with grocery as a listed industry, a multi-temperature option and robotic picking at ports.