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Industry terms definedDemystifying e-Grocery technology

The next paradigm in food retailing is here. These are the terms you need to know in order to understand this breakthrough technology.

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Defining industry terms to educate and inform the growing industry of automated grocery fulfillment.

e-Grocery

Terms related to e-grocery

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Electrical

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Construction

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Fire Protection

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Fire Suppression

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Micro Fulfillment Center (MFC)

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Operations

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Packaging

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Refrigeration

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Retail

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Robotics

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Supply Chain

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INDUSTRY VOCABULARY

These key terms are essential to understanding
e-Grocery terminology.

An automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) is a generic term for a system that automatically stores items in a repository and can also retrieve them. ASRS is a type of warehouse automation technology.
Goods to person is used to describe a traditional method of filling orders that delivers product to an order picker or customer at a retail pick-up location. This can also be referred to as a “goods-to-picker” system.
Cube automated storage and retrieval systems or hive systems are densely packed automated tote storage systems. These systems use interlocking bins stacked inside an aluminum grid or cube with no space for aisles. This robotic cube storage uses a fleet of robots to drive across tracks on top of the grid and work together to move bins out of the system and deliver to operator ports.
Eaches is a retail supply chain term used for individual items versus a full case. For example, one box of cereal versus a case of cereal. This term is commonly used in the e-commerce industry, since the need to pick small lots of products for online orders has increased in recent years.
Each picking is an order picking process of picking an individual item from a master carton. It may also known as split-case picking or piece picking.
An autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is a robot that can move without human oversight. They can travel in X and Y paths and freely along a warehouse floor with safeguards for potentially interacting with human traffic. They are often built with cameras and sensors to help them navigate and don’t require wired power.
A micro fulfillment center or MFC is defined as an automated fulfillment center used by ecommerce businesses to store their inventory closer to the end consumer. Their structure size typically ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet, with some as small as 5,000 square feet. MFCs can be co-housed inside an existing retail store, grocery store, or placed in a smaller warehouse space in an urban location.
Last mile delivery is defined as the very last step of the delivery process when a parcel is moved from a transportation hub or warehouse to its final destination, usually a personal residence or retail store.
A local fulfillment center is compact, modular warehouse built within, or added to, a store. This term was used by Walmart, but was replaced with “market fulfillment center”. Others may use micro-fulfillment center (MFC) as an analogous term. It includes an automated replenishment system to provide automated picking of orders, storage and dispense at the store level.
Automated picking storage and dispense is an automated system that contains product inventory so that customer orders can be picked into order totes. It also stores completed orders and, at the appropriate time, dispenses those orders for either customer pickup at store or delivery to home.
Novastore is an Alert Innovation term for a store architecture and associated supply chain logistics. The strict definition for Novastore is a supermarket with an automated packaged-goods market (a.k.a. “center store”) and an optional self-service fresh-goods market (a.k.a. “perimeter departments”). It automates the center store and allows the grocer to focus on customer experience with produce, meat, dairy, bakery, cafe, etc.
Orders per day is the number of orders sold by a store on a daily basis. This is an important metric used for sizing an order fulfillment automation system.