Industry
Retail
Omnichannel CX and Intelligent Innovation – The Future of Retail
Highlights
- Colruyt has over 1,000 physical outlets across Belgium, Luxembourg, and France offering the lowest price to their customers. TCS collaborated with the grocer to implement autonomous mobile robots to improve picking productivity at the warehouses.
- The project saw us navigate an array of challenges to achieve the world’s first innovation project of its kind. That meant investing in strategic technology adoption fundamental to sustaining market leadership and consistently delivering value to the end customers.
- The success of this project has provided a strong foundation for expanding automation across other distribution centers.
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Overview
Colruyt Group is a leading supermarket chain in Europe with over 1,000 physical outlets across Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.
Lowest price for every product at all times is Colruyt’s key commitment to customers. However, this requires efficient, automation-driven warehouse operations that help streamline processes and reduce costs. In addition, they had to ensure constant innovation to stay ahead in a competitive market. That meant investing in strategic technologies and their adoption. The approach has been fundamental to sustaining market leadership and consistently delivering value to customers.
Colruyt decided to future-proof its supply chain to modernize operations through automation. This also meant the grocer could maintain profitability while fulfilling the expectations of cost-conscious customers.
Quest for the best
Colruyt has traditionally fulfilled its online grocery orders using a manual picking process, which is inherently time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Warehouse associates are required to traverse large storage areas to locate and retrieve individual items, often walking several kilometers during a single shift. This significantly limited picking productivity and frequently resulted in shipping delays. Low productivity in manual picking translated into a slow order fulfillment rate, directly impacting operational efficiency. This led to higher cost per order given the number of labor hours required to process the same volume of orders.
This inefficiency became even more pronounced as order volumes grew post Covid. Instead of benefiting from economies of scale, Colruyt faced rising per-order costs—a consequence of slower, labor-intensive nature of manual picking. The inability to scale fulfillment speed in line with demand created a cost bottleneck that challenged both profitability and customer service.
Self-driving cars
To address the order fulfilment bottlenecks, Colruyt, in partnership with TCS, launched world’s first automation in the grocery pickup business.
Colruyt’s online grocery shopping service—Collect & Go—introduced autonomous vehicles in its distribution centre.
The self- driving vehicle (SDV) robots have been deployed to aid the picking of grocery items. A successful collaboration between TCS, Colruyt, and other technology partners enabled the necessary modifications and integrations to the warehouse management systems, ensuring their compatibility for efficient grocery-picking operations. Some unique features include:
- Handling of fresh products such as vegetables and fruits with irregular shapes
- Algorithm to support weight-based product picking
- Online integration with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) from Oracle Warehouse Management System (WMS)
- Flexible approach to distribute orders to manual and automated picking
- Online integration of special picking/handling instructions for weighed articles in the fresh zone
- Online integration services to help with picking decisions in case of discrepancies
- Automated weight retrieval from barcode component using application programming interfaces (APIs)
- Integration with the billing system to facilitate picking actuals via services, including discount coupons
Contextual knowledge strengthened by the 20-year TCS-Colruyt partnership redefined possibilities as the project navigated an array of challenges to achieve the world’s first innovation project of its kind.
Business benefits
The project yielded several benefits in line with the overall improvement plan.
Currently, the Collect & Go distribution center in Londerzeel has a 260-strong headcount working side by side with the SDVs.
The innovative system has simplified and streamlined logistics operations thereby introducing a new method of order processing. In addition, the SDVs navigate autonomously through the warehouse and guide Collect & Go staff to the right locations to retrieve items. All SDVs are also equipped with a screen that displays in real time the list of products to be picked, while calculating the most efficient route through the warehouse. This system has significantly reduced warehouse navigation for the staff and has led to a 20% increase in productivity, particularly in the picking of fresh products measured in weight (kilograms, grams) and pieces.
The success of this project has provided a strong foundation for expanding automation to other distribution centers. Colruyt is now preparing to make larger investments in automating the ambient (non-refrigerated) sections of their warehouses and TCS is set to play an integral role in the next planned phase. The TCS team will be working closely with Colruyt to design, implement, and scale the advanced automation solutions in the distribution center to boost picking productivity and reduce the cost per order.
Koen Lannoy
Head, Ecommerce Food IT Service Center, Colruyt Group
This project with TCS is a testament to what’s possible when innovation meets execution. From handling weight based fresh produce to enabling route optimization, the automation solution is not just technically sound, it’s business ready. We’re proud to have pioneered this with a partner who understands our vision.”
Tom Malfroid
Head, Ecommerce Food Supply Chain, Colruyt Group
The success of our Collect & Go automation initiative is a clear signal of where retail logistics is headed. TCS as our trusted implementation partner, helped us turn the Collect & Go automation vision into a scalable reality—one that enhances productivity, reduces costs, and empowers our teams. This is the future of grocery fulfillment, and we’re proud to lead the way."
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