カウネット announced that its Representative Director and President, Miyazawa Noritomo (宮澤典友), had been appointed CLO (Chief Logistics Officer). The company outlined a policy of making its ongoing reforms to delivery, ordering, inventory and warehouse operations its top management priority.
On 20 August, カウネット announced that Miyazawa Noritomo (宮澤典友) had been appointed CLO and had completed the required notification to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. By appointing its president as CLO, the company is demonstrating its commitment to making logistics reform its highest-priority company-wide initiative.
Measures implemented to date include a shift from same-day to next-day delivery, with approximately 36% of order volume moved to next-day delivery. This reduced the workload during the peak delivery period from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. by 9.4 percentage points. On the ordering side, the company will introduce the カウ得！Point-Up Calendar in January 2026 to announce special-price days in advance and smooth order volumes. In 2023, it introduced an online cancellation function allowing orders to be canceled within 10 minutes, helping reduce unnecessary deliveries. It also raised the order-value threshold for company-paid shipping in June 2023, promoting more efficient deliveries through consolidated purchases.
In receiving and transportation, the number of unloading operations taking more than 2 hours was reduced from 17 to 1 in one year, a reduction of approximately 94%. A dock appointment booking system was introduced in 2024 to make truck docking times visible. This has helped optimize loading efficiency through joint deliveries with companies from other industries, reduce truck operations by approximately 2,000 per year, and cut CO2 emissions. AI-based demand forecasting was introduced in 2022, with the scope of categories subsequently expanded. As of the first half of 2026, the company was sharing inventory and order information in near real time with 58 companies to optimize inventory placement.
At the facilities level, the 東北IDC distribution center in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, is scheduled for completion in February 2026. The center will use Hitachi, Ltd.'s next-generation material-handling system to store up to 270,000 SKUs at high density. Operations are scheduled to begin in October 2026, and in-facility productivity is expected to improve by approximately 40% compared with the current site. Upon taking office, Miyazawa commented that he aimed to advance logistics reform and build a sustainable logistics system.