Aeon puts Mujin robots on store-by-store mixed pallets at its new Kawaguchi center

Aeon's new distribution center in Kawaguchi, north of Tokyo, went into full operation on Oct. 29 with robots doing the job the retailer has always left to people: stacking a different mix of cases for each store onto that store's own pallet. Six Mujin robot arms build those store-by-store loads and five more break down mixed incoming pallets, according to Shokuhin Shimbun and LOGI-BIZ, which toured the site. The center, Aeon Kawaguchi Higashi XD, supplies about 200 My Basket mini-supermarkets around Tokyo.

Aeon picked the hardest step on purpose. Small city stores order small, varied quantities, so every outbound pallet is a one-off puzzle of boxes of different sizes and weights. Mujin's physical AI system plans each stack in advance from the shipping order, watches it with 3D vision while loading, and adjusts if a case shifts or the stack starts to slide, the companies say. A warehouse execution system the two built together directs the arms, 82 automated guided vehicles, shuttle racks and the handheld terminals that give staff their tasks. Shokuhin Shimbun reports that the site saves the work of 39 people a day.

Fukuoka stopped at the sorter; Kawaguchi goes to the truck

It is the furthest Aeon has gone since it signed with Mujin in October 2023. Its Fukuoka XD center, running since July 2024, automated only the stretch from the automated warehouse to the sorter.

Aeon is not promising to repeat it everywhere. The group runs more than 70 distribution centers built in the early 2000s, Aeon Global SCM president Hiroki Yamamoto said, and "we are not aiming for full automation at every center"; the level will depend on store format and region. Mujin CEO Issei Takino pitched the data instead: physical AI, he said, lets a retailer turn what experienced workers knew into something digital.

The next mark is at Kawaguchi itself. Receiving inspection and part of piece sorting are still manual, and Aeon's target is to automate 80% of the work on ambient goods, from receiving to shipping, by 2030.