Applications of Computing in Industry : Lecture

Ocado is an award winning online retailer that is revolutionising the way people buy their groceries. Ocado has no shops. Instead customers place their orders on the Ocado website or mobile platforms and these are then picked and packed in a huge automated warehouse (the largest of its kind in the world), from where they are then delivered to customers around the country within one hour slots.

Operating such a business with the scalability, efficiency and consistency that Ocado achieves requires some very sophisticated and innovative IT systems, all of which are developed in-house by its IT division, Ocado Technology. This talk explores some of the hidden complexities and challenges associated with operating such a business and the IT systems that are used to power it.

Paul Clarke is Head of Routing, Delivery, Mobile and Simulation Systems at Ocado. After joining Ocado in 2006, Paul initially worked on warehouse control systems and then joined the team designing Ocado..s next highly automated warehouse. After establishing the Simulation and Mobile development teams, Paul then co-wrote Ocado..s award winning iPhone app which remains the only app worldwide from a major retailer supporting a full offline shop.

After graduating in Physics from Oxford, Paul joined the computer consultancy Scicon. During his subsequent career he has worked for a variety of different companies, focusing on the areas such as real-time, embedded and online systems. He has also worked as a freelance consultant and been involved in a number of start-up ventures. In 1982, Paul co-founded Torus Systems which developed an iconic WIMP style environment for the newly launched IBM PC and which was subsequently adopted by IBM as the standard network operating system for their Token Ring network.