Waitrose fulfils over 150,000 grocery deliveries a week. Ensuring customers get the goods they need at the times promised requires a sophisticated combination of IT platforms. These platforms plan routes and consignments that guide drivers to destinations whilst tracking progress against plan.

The challenge

Waitrose were keen to decarbonise their store operations by transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs). Adding EVs to fleets adds another layer of planning to ensure vehicles are charged to optimise scheduling and uptime. They chose their Bracknell and St Katherine Docks branches to test using electric vehicles for home delivery orders each week.

When Waitrose began trialling EVs in store operations in 2022 they wanted to ensure:

• All aspects of EV and charger performance were being tracked to inform future roll out planning.
• EV charging loads would not exceed site capacity.
• Driver and grocery team leader roles would not be complicated by charge or route planning.

The solution

FPS deployed its Operate platform that uniquely connects vehicles, chargers, building metering, driver handsets, and transport planning systems by securely integrating with Waitrose’s existing IT platforms.

Impact

The platform delivered benefits to all stakeholders:

• Transport and Energy teams – have access to more than 80 utilisation, performance, cost, and emissions metrics via intuitive dashboards and exportable raw data. Peak charging loads are supressed by more than 20% and charging costs reduced by up to 40%.
• Store Teams – have vehicle to route, vehicle to charger, and charging profiles automatically planned for them so they can focus on serving customers rather than managing EVs. Conditional vehicle charging status alerts help to keep vehicles on the road by avoiding failed or forgotten charging sessions every week.
• Drivers – roles are simplified. Aggregated data creates automated alerts and instructions that consider journey and range forecasts to eliminate range anxiety.

Operate is now deployed across Waitrose’s EV fleet from stores to dark customer fulfilment centres.

“We have been working with FPS since 2020 on a range of electrification topics, from our van fleets to transport refrigeration unit hook-ups. Currently, nearly all of our commercial vehicle EVs and the majority of our transport refrigeration hook-ups are on their FPS Operate platform and FPS has become a key part of our transport decarbonisation journey.”

Justin Laney, Partner and General Manager Central Transport, John Lewis Partnership