PepsiCo leverages Siemens and NVIDIA digital twin tech to revolutionise manufacturing at CES 2026

PepsiCo unveils a pioneering collaboration with Siemens and NVIDIA at CES 2026, adopting physics-based digital twins and AI to transform supply chain planning, with early pilots indicating significant efficiency gains and capital savings.

At CES 2026, PepsiCo announced a multi-year collaboration with Siemens and NVIDIA intended to rework how the company plans, simulates and operates its manufacturing and warehousing footprint by marrying physics-based digital twins with...

generative and systems-level AI. According to the PepsiCo press release, the initiative is billed as an industry-first for a global consumer packaged goods company and follows early pilot deployments in the United States.

PepsiCo said the work is designed to accelerate capacity and flexibility without the time and capital intensity of traditional physical expansion. “The scale and complexity of PepsiCo’s business, from farm to shelf, is massive, and we are embedding AI throughout our operations to better meet the increasing demands of our consumers and customers,” Ramon Laguarta, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, said at CES 2026. The company described a shift to a digital-first planning strategy that uses AI agents as co-designers to simulate, validate and optimise facility layouts before physical changes are made.

The technical backbone of the effort is Siemens’ newly unveiled Digital Twin Composer, which Siemens presented at CES 2026 as a platform for building Industrial Metaverse environments at scale. According to Siemens’ announcement and newsroom materials, the Composer combines 2D and 3D digital twin data with managed, secure real-time physical information and photorealistic visualisation accelerated by NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, enabling an integrated view across product, process and facility lifecycles. “We are proud to partner with PepsiCo and NVIDIA to digitally transform their manufacturing facilities using physics-based digital twins and AI from design to engineering to operations. The Digital Twin Composer is a cornerstone in enabling PepsiCo to transform manufacturing and warehousing,” Roland Busch, CEO of Siemens AG, said at CES 2026.

NVIDIA’s role centres on the Omniverse visualisation and simulation stack and on providing infrastructure for physics-accurate models and AI agents. “Physical industries are entering the age of AI. For companies with real-world assets, digital twins are the foundation of their AI journey,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said at CES 2026. NVIDIA and Siemens have previously expanded their partnership to connect Omniverse and Siemens Xcelerator platforms, aiming to create what both firms describe as an Industrial AI operating system that links edge, cloud and simulation workflows.

PepsiCo reports early operational benefits from the pilots. Using Siemens’ Digital Twin Composer, NVIDIA Omniverse and computer vision, the company says teams recreated machines, conveyors, pallet routes and operator paths with physics-level accuracy so AI agents could simulate and test system changes virtually. According to PepsiCo, those pilots identified up to 90 percent of potential issues before any physical modification, delivered a 20 percent increase in throughput on initial deployment, produced near‑100 percent design validation and uncovered opportunities that reduced projected capital expenditure by 10 to 15 percent.

Industry and vendor materials emphasise that the technology stack is intended to scale beyond isolated pilots. Siemens’ materials state the Composer enables organisations to maintain a secure, high-fidelity 3D environment containing all aspects of product and production data, while NVIDIA and Siemens joint communications highlight integration of generative AI and real-time photorealistic rendering to accelerate design and operational decisions. PepsiCo framed the approach as building toward a single, AI-powered ecosystem of plants and warehouses: “We are deploying the first digital blueprint that reimagines how the supply chain is designed, built, and scaled, a first for the industry,” Athina Kanioura, CEO, Latin America, and Global Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer of PepsiCo, said in the company announcement.

The companies acknowledge the claims come from vendor and corporate communications and position the collaboration as an exemplar of industrial AI adoption rather than an industry-wide proof. Siemens and NVIDIA have both issued prior statements about extending their partnership to deliver industrial metaverse and AI capabilities, and the new announcements reiterate that strategy while placing a major consumer goods operator at the centre of an early use case. As the pilots expand, independent verification of performance gains and the durability of savings will be key to determining whether the approach shifts standard capital planning and operations across manufacturing and logistics sectors.

Source: Noah Wire Services