Aeon Opens Kawaguchi-Higashi XD, Its First Physical AI Warehouse

Aeon, Aeon Global SCM and robotics firm Mujin began full operation of the Aeon Kawaguchi-Higashi XD on October 29. The automated warehouse in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, uses physical AI to handle mixed-load sorting and to manage staff and equipment from a single system.

Aeon positions the site as a model center for its logistics automation, part of a wider overhaul of its logistics structure. It is built to cope with the complex store-by-store shipments that small urban food supermarkets require. For ambient-temperature case goods, the company is aiming to automate 80% of the process from receiving to shipping.

How the physical AI works

The centerpiece is a pair of AI-controlled industrial robot arms: a mixed palletizing robot and a mixed depalletizing robot. They use 3D vision to check how goods are arranged while sorting and stacking. Because packages vary in size and weight, the system simulates the stacking plan in advance based on shipping orders and then builds pallets for high loading efficiency.

During loading, the robots keep checking the load. If items shift or a stack starts to collapse, the system adjusts the arm's movements and carries on working. Mixed loads, whose condition changes easily, have until now been hard to hand over from human workers. Aeon expects labor savings equivalent to about 25 people per day in palletizing and about 8 people in depalletizing.

Other automation and what is next

The warehouse also uses a case-sequencing shuttle rack, which retrieves items from racks to the sorter in the correct order at high speed based on shipping priority, along with automated guided vehicles for sorting. A warehouse execution system, WES, issues instructions to equipment and workers in one place.

Aeon announced a partnership with Mujin in 2023 and said it would build automated warehouses by 2026. It has already put automated systems into service at Aeon Fukuoka XD in 2024 and Aeon Iwate FDC in September 2026. Kawaguchi-Higashi XD is the first Aeon site to automate the whole chain from sorting mixed loads to stacking them.