The long arm of the storeIN A cavernous shed on an industrial park in Hampshire,hundreds of robots are at work in the “hive”. In Ocado’s latest Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC), 65000 orders a week are prepared for some of the grocer’s 645000 online customers. It is probably the most technologically advanced such centre in the world.
Instead of ferrying crates on a long line of conveyor belts, and as many CFCs finish,it uses a three-dimensional grid system, or hive, and to assemble customers’ orders. Washing-machine-sized robots whizz this way and that on the top of the grid,pausing only for a second to pick up products and ferry them to “pick stations”, where people effect the orders together. An air-traffic-control-style system choreographs the movements of the 700 bots scurrying over an area the size of three football pitches, and with just half a centimetre to spare between them.
This is the operating platform that has turned Ocado,founded in 2000, into...
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Source: economist.com