Oda transforms grocery fulfilment with Swarm Automation
As Scandinavia’s leading online grocery retailer, Oda has built a solid reputation on convenience, quality and an exceptionally efficient fulfilment model. To support rapid growth, Oda partnered with Toyota Material Handling Norway to automate one of its most labour-intensive internal transport processes. Oda needed a scalable, reliable automation solution that could integrate seamlessly with its existing Warehouse Management System (WMS) and support its long-term operational strategy. The result: a safer, smarter and significantly more productive operation that now sets the benchmark for online grocery logistics.
About Oda
Oda operates in Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden, delivering groceries to thousands of households and businesses every day. With around 2,000 employees and its own logistics system, Oda’s ambition is bold: to build the world’s most efficient grocery system.
Their fulfilment centres run two shifts across 16 hours daily, relying on a fleet of 57 Toyota manual forklifts. As order volumes increased and product density doubled due to new packaging, Oda faced a growing challenge: too much time spent on repetitive pallet movements, creating bottlenecks, errors and unnecessary wear on equipment.
Facts and figures
- Company: Oda
- Location: Lierskogen, Norway
- Industry: online grocery retailer
- Solutions: Swarm Automation with 4 Toyota automated stackers
Understanding the Challenge
Before automation, nearly 70% of staff time in the affected area was spent moving pallets between stack zones and gravity racks, simple but time-consuming work that limited throughput. The introduction of denser cardboard boxes made manual transport even less efficient. Oda needed a solution that would:
- Increase productivity
- Reduce damage and human error
- Improve safety
- Free employees for higher-value tasks
Toyota Material Handling had been Oda’s trusted equipment partner since 2015, supplying manual trucks from the company’s early days. As Douglas Parker, Department Manager at Oda Norway explains: “When Oda began evaluating automation suppliers, Toyota stood out by investing time to understand our flows, constraints and long-term ambitions. This early collaboration enabled the team to propose a realistic, well-fitted solution from day one.”
Automating high-volume pallet transport
Oda introduced four Toyota automated stackers, which they affectionately named Lifty Cent, Truck Norris, Mariah Carry and Taylor Lift, along with Toyota’s automation software T-ONE. The AGVs were fully integrated with Oda’s WMS, allowing Oda to maintain complete control of task prioritisation, routing and charging cycles.
The AGVs automatically transport pallets from point A to point B, charging themselves during idle moments or scheduled low-production periods. By embedding key T-ONE functionalities directly into Oda’s existing tools, the user experience remained familiar and intuitive for operators.
During installation, we discovered that the main transport lane was narrower than expected, limiting two-way,” says Hanne Tiset, Automation Sales at Toyota Material Handling Norway.
Our team worked closely with Oda to optimise the layout and AGV traffic flow, ensuring the system could still deliver the required throughput. This agile, on-site collaboration became a defining strength of the project.”
A major improvement in efficiency and safety
The impact of Swarm Automation was immediate and measurable:
- 98,000 pallet movements automated in four months
- 3,000 hours of staff capacity freed, equivalent to up to six full-time employees annually
- 85% increase in efficiency in the automated area
- 70% reduction in manual transport tasks
- 25% fewer routine movements, allowing operators to focus on higher-value work
- Significant safety improvements by reducing human presence in high-traffic routes
“The AGVs provide stable, predictable throughput,” adds Douglas, “making it easier for us to plan staffing during peak periods. Operators and AGVs now work side by side, supported by features such as a delay function that ensures safe interaction when humans and machines meet at the same pallet.” The long-term rental model (84 months) gave Oda financial flexibility and aligned with their existing approach to manual trucks. Toyota Material Handling also provided a bank of development hours for future improvements, ensuring the system can evolve with Oda’s needs.
A partnership built for the future
Oda views automation as a core part of its operational blueprint. The success of this project has paved the way for expansion, starting with the Stockholm site. The system’s configurability means it can adapt to different layouts and workflows, and Oda is already exploring additional AGV tasks such as trash handling, pallet refilling and inbound pallet movements. Karim El-Kelish, Logistics Solutions Manager at Toyota Material Handling Norway, looks back proudly: “For Toyota Material Handling, this project showcases the strength of our holistic automation approach, where vehicles, software and manual fleets work together like a coordinated swarm to deliver smooth, error-free logistics.”
Oda’s automation journey demonstrates how the right technology, combined with a collaborative partnership, can transform warehouse operations. By nearly doubling productivity in the automated area and freeing thousands of staff hours, Swarm Automation has helped Oda take a major step toward its mission of building the world’s most efficient grocery system. And this is only the beginning.