PepsiCo says digital twins can flag up to 90% of potential issues before any equipment moves

Jan. 6, 2026 — PepsiCo said physics-based digital twins of select U.S. plants and warehouses let it find up to 90 percent of potential issues before making any physical change. It said the work delivered a 20 percent throughput increase on initial deployment. Here's what happened, what it cost, and what went wrong.

Cost and outcome (as of Jan. 6, 2026)

Outcome: The approach "has already delivered a 20 percent increase in throughput on initial deployment," PepsiCo said. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)
Cost: PepsiCo reports "10 to 15 percent reductions in capital expenditure (Capex) by uncovering hidden capacity and validating investments in a virtual environment." It did not say what the program costs. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)
Claim: AI agents "simulate, test, and refine system changes - identifying up to 90 percent of potential issues before any physical modifications occur." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

Why PepsiCo is doing this

PepsiCo said demand for production and distribution capacity is rising, and it wants to "retool and optimize its existing physical footprint" because "traditional expansion methods are slow and costly." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

It is shifting to "a digital-first planning strategy, leveraging physics-based digital twins and AI agents as co-designers to simulate, validate, and optimize facility layouts before any physical build." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

"The scale and complexity of PepsiCo's business, from farm to shelf, is massive," said Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta. "Our work with Siemens and NVIDIA will help accelerate our continued journey of becoming a future-fit company, operating with agility and foresight." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

PepsiCo said its products are consumed more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories, and that it generated nearly $92 billion in net revenue in 2024. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

What the pilots did

PepsiCo and Siemens are converting select U.S. manufacturing and warehouse sites "into high-fidelity 3D digital twins that simulate plant operations and the end-to-end supply chain to establish a performance baseline." PepsiCo said "within weeks, teams optimized and validated new configurations to boost capacity and throughput." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

Using Siemens' Digital Twin Composer, NVIDIA Omniverse and computer vision, PepsiCo said it "can now recreate every machine, conveyor, pallet route and operator path with physics-level accuracy." It also cites "faster design cycles" and "nearly 100 percent design validation." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

"We are deploying the first digital blueprint that reimagines how the supply chain is designed, built, and scaled," said Athina Kanioura, PepsiCo's CEO for Latin America and global chief strategy and transformation officer. She said PepsiCo is "building toward a world where every plant and warehouse operates as part of a single, intelligent ecosystem" whose facilities "anticipate and then adapt" to demand. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

The vendors

The partnership was announced in the opening keynote at CES 2026. PepsiCo is using Siemens' Digital Twin Composer to simulate U.S. facility upgrades "with plans to scale globally." (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

"For companies with real-world assets, digital twins are the foundation of their AI journey," said NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. Siemens CEO Roland Busch called Digital Twin Composer "a cornerstone in enabling PepsiCo to transform manufacturing and warehousing." Both companies sell the technology. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

The release describes Siemens Digital Twin Composer as a new product that combines 2D and 3D digital twin data with real-time physical information in "a managed, secure real-time photorealistic virtual scene accelerated by NVIDIA Omniverse libraries," kept up to date across the lifecycle of a product, process or facility. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)

What went wrong

Pilot numbers only. The figures come from "early pilots" and "initial deployment" at unnamed U.S. sites. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)
No baselines. PepsiCo doesn't say throughput or capex compared with what, or across how many sites. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)
Vendors are partners in the claim. Siemens and NVIDIA, which supply the software, are quoted in the same release. (PepsiCo, Jan. 6, 2026)
What we don't know yet: which plants were twinned, what the program costs, and whether the 20% holds beyond the first deployment.

Our follow-up question for PepsiCo

Which sites produced the 20% throughput and 10–15% capex figures, and against what baseline?

Sources

PepsiCo, “PepsiCo Announces Industry-First AI and Digital Twin Collaboration with Siemens and NVIDIA,” Jan. 6, 2026 (CES 2026). pepsico.com

Disclosure: [not in copy] Editor placeholder