Ocado smart platform

Leading online grocery retailer Ocado ships more than 260,000 orders a week. Realising a huge opportunity to transform its operations and propel future growth, Ocado were ambitious and bold enough to invest in and develop the Ocado Smart Platform (OSP).

OSP includes a new and innovative automation fulfilment solution in the form of a modular robotic grid. This underpins the warehousing and logistics service Ocado provides to its global partners, such as supermarket retailer Morrisons, and is currently being rolled out in all new warehouse installations globally. 

In a traditional warehouse, boxes travel great distances to be filled by humans. However, in the highly competitive and increasingly online retail industry, warehouses are coming under increased efficiency demands.

In response to this challenge, Ocado radically overhauled it warehousing system with robotics. Roaming the warehouse on a grid above millions of grocery items, Ocado’s robots can assemble a typical 50-item order in five minutes.

To deliver maximum efficiency, the smart platform needed to control thousands of fast-moving robots simultaneously, each to within a fraction of a second. No existing technology came close.

So, we designed a robust solution combining tried-and-tested building blocks and innovative new technology developed specifically for Ocado.

The end result is a breakthrough in radio design – the most densely packed cellular network in the world. It’s also scalable, with the capacity to handle up to 20 times the number of current movements.

Ocado recognised that, while OSP would give them a clear competitive advantage, fulfilling their vision would require very significant investment and carry considerable risk.

Using our proven processes, our wealth of complex project experience and a methodical systems engineering process, we addressed the biggest risks up-front at relatively low cost. We then planned a modular programme of work with clear boundaries and well-defined interfaces between modules, as well as an effective test and integration plan.

In this way, we were able to limit the knock-on effects of any significant changes to any one module. 

Hugely ambitious timescales meant that the design simply had to be right first time.

The custom radio boards, developed in our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, did indeed work first time – a remarkable achievement given their complexity – enabling software integration and key functionality demonstrations at a very early stage.

Following an aggressive de-risking and regulatory programme, the major design, implementation, integration and test tasks were completed and we reached the minimum viable product stage gate in under a year.

Over the next 6-12 months, we added important new features, accelerated the NPI process and hardened the product ready for launch.

A very challenging radio environment added a further layer of complexity to the problem of establishing robust, high-speed communication with a high density of users – something no existing technology could provide.

To address this, we built our own mini-warehouse test facility and helped Ocado to create their own staging area, enabling us to run and test many robots, basestations and radios in a realistic setting. We also developed a simple yet powerful user interface to overcome the huge challenge of managing the fleet of robots during commissioning, operations and decommissioning.

Achieving regulatory compliance was another major area of risk. There was no precedent for using the unlicenced 5GHz spectrum in this way and failure to secure regulatory approval had the potential to derail the entire project.

Using our relationship with Ofcom in the UK and the FCC in the US, we worked closely with the regulatory bodies to create new test protocols, demonstrating that our system followed the spirit as well as the letter of the law.

Ultimately, we were complemented by the regulators on our approach, securing approval to operate in the EU, US and Canada.