PepsiCo pioneers industrial metaverse to revolutionise factory expansion and efficiency

PepsiCo, in partnership with Siemens and NVIDIA, launches a multi-year digital-twin programme to virtualise factory and warehouse design, promising significant cost savings, shorter project timelines, and smarter supply chain management amid rising demand and supply constraints.

PepsiCo has begun a multi-year roll-out of artificial intelligence and digital-twin technology to rework how its factories and warehouses are designed, simulated and scaled, aiming to replace sl...

ow, capital-intensive physical expansion with virtual optimisation that can be validated before ground is broken. According to the report by ESM Magazine, the programme , announced at CES 2026 , uses the Siemens Digital Twin Composer, powered by NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, to build large-scale industrial “metaverse” environments that combine 2D and 3D twin data with live physical information. Athina Kanioura, CEO, Latin America, and global chief strategy and transformation officer of PepsiCo, said, “With a unified, AI-powered digital foundation, PepsiCo is building toward a world where every plant and warehouse operates as part of a single, intelligent ecosystem. In this future, our facilities don’t just respond to demand, they anticipate and then adapt to it.”

PepsiCo said in its own announcement that the technology is initially being applied to select U.S. manufacturing and distribution sites, with plans to expand globally. The company claims early deployments identified up to 90% of potential issues in simulation before physical implementation, achieved roughly a 20% increase in throughput in initial tests, and realised a 10–15% reduction in capital expenditure by uncovering hidden capacity. Those figures, the company added, have shortened design cycles and driven near‑complete design validation prior to construction.

Siemens, which unveiled the Digital Twin Composer at CES 2026, described the software as a tool for creating high-fidelity digital replicas of plants and warehouses that link simulation, industrial AI and real‑time engineering data. Siemens said teams were able to model “every machine, conveyor, pallet flow, and operator path with precision,” establishing performance baselines and virtually testing new configurations within weeks. Roland Busch, Siemens’ CEO, set the announcement in the context of an “Industrial AI revolution” and framed the Composer as a way to scale immersive, photoreal virtual environments across operations.

NVIDIA’s role, highlighted during Siemens’ keynote discussion with NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang, centres on the Omniverse libraries that provide the real-time, photoreal rendering and collaborative simulation backbone. NVIDIA said that combining Omniverse with Siemens’ tools enables cross-disciplinary engineering teams to visualise and iterate on facility changes in a shared virtual space, accelerating decisions that would otherwise require costly physical trials.

Industry observers say the collaboration is notable because it represents a consumer packaged‑goods company adopting industrial metaverse techniques more commonly seen in heavy manufacturing. Analysts pointed out that virtualising layouts and flows can materially reduce the risk and lead times of expansion at a moment when many firms face chronic supply‑chain constraints and rising demand for faster fulfilment. Government and industry data on capital project timelines show that protracted permitting and construction typically account for much of expansion cost and delay, lending context to PepsiCo’s push to validate designs virtually.

Not all gains are guaranteed at scale. Executives and consultants cautioned that the quality of results depends on the fidelity of input data, integration with existing operational systems, and the governance of AI models used for optimisation. Siemens acknowledged these dependencies in its materials, noting that the technology requires accurate engineering data feeds and tight alignment between digital simulations and on‑site measurement to realise promised savings.

For now, PepsiCo, Siemens and NVIDIA frame the effort as a step toward an “industrial operating system” where plants and warehouses operate as interconnected, adaptive elements of a global supply network. If the early productivity and cost metrics hold as the programme moves beyond pilot sites, the collaboration could set a precedent for other consumer goods firms seeking to expand capacity without proportionally increasing capital outlay.

Source: Noah Wire Services