Since the pandemic, more and more consumers have been getting their groceries online and having them delivered. According to Statista, the grocery delivery market worldwide is set to reach revenues of $770.9 billion this year and grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.81% between 2024 and 2029. To meet this growing demand, traditional grocers like The Kroger Co. are investing in automating delivery operations for their customers.
Kroger today announced that it will roll out a range of automated technologies from Ocado Group PLC in customer fulfillment centers (CFCs). The leading U.S. grocery retailer said it will implement Ocado’s latest “Re:imagined” technologies across multiple CFCs across its live network, as well as in future CFCs.
The technologies include proprietary Ocado innovations such as On-Grid Robotic Pick (OGRP) and Automated Frameload (AFL). The Hatfield, U.K.-based company said these technologies will bring new levels of efficiency and labor productivity to the Kroger Delivery network.
“We are delivering a step change in warehouse automation and new levels of efficiency to our partners, as global supply chains are under significant pressure to manage higher volumes and greater complexity, as well as challenges in labor cost and availability,” stated Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado Group.
“Today marks another exciting milestone in our partnership with Kroger,” he added. “Our current CFCs are already helping to deliver a game-changing quality of service to their customers across the USA. We are excited for these latest technologies to further enhance that proposition, as well as the efficiency of Kroger’s operations in live and future CFCs.”
Inside the Ocado Re:imagined technology
OGRP is a robotic arm that is installed directly on a storage grid. The robotic shuttles on the grid deposit stock next to robot arms, which then pack them into customer bags.
Ocado’s retail partners can stock up to 50,000 different products each, so the robot arms need to be able to deal with a huge amount of variety in weight, size, shape, surface, fragility, and packaging. The company said advanced machine vision, deep reinforcement learning, and sensing capabilities enable OGRP to pick tens of thousands of products and pack them densely into bags with precision and accuracy.
AFL automates a physically demanding job in the warehouse: the loading of prepared customer orders onto delivery frames ready for dispatch. Ocado said it is designed to enable efficient and accurate loading of delivery totes without human touch.
The system uses computer vision to examine the tote and the frame. It then forms an understanding of the dimensions and shape of the tote and enables alignment with the frame. As it does this, it makes direction adjustments in real time to push the tote in.
Kroger expects to drive down costs
Kroger said these innovations will enable it to further drive down its cost to serve from CFCs and enhance its customer proposition. At full capacity, it expects OGRP to pick up more than 70% of an extensive online grocery range.
Ocado’s other global partners are also upgrading their distribution network with Ocado’s latest technologies. For example, AEON in Japan recently announced that it will also retrofit Ocado’s OGRP technology into its existing operations.
This technology is also already rolling to U.K. CFCs, where it is picking an increasingly wide range of items.