Inbound Logistics | January 2026

In January 2026, PepsiCo announced a multi-year collaboration with Siemens and NVIDIA to transform plant and supply chain operations through articial intelligence and digital twin technology. This collaboration marks a rst-of-its- kind initiative for a global CPG company applying digital twins to reshape how plant and warehousing facilities are digitally simulated and tested, with early pilots already underway in the United States. PepsiCo is using AI and new digital PepsiCo Simulates Supply Chain Operations with AI and Digital Twins

80% ESTIMATED STOCKOUT REDUCTION By fresh food supply chain tech company Afresh, which uses AI to help grocers simplify operations, chain tech operations,

cut waste, and serve shoppers better. Its AI engine provides one single source of truth to support smarter decisions across stores. Albertsons Companies, Brookshire Brookshire

90% POTENTIAL ISSUES IN PLANT OPERATIONS IDENTIFIED

approaches to process simulation and facility design to retool and optimize its existing physical footprint. PepsiCo and Siemens are digitally transforming select U.S. manufacturing and warehouse facilities by converting them into high-delity 3D digital twins that simulate plant operations and the end-

Grocery Company, Bashas’, Cub Foods, Smart & Final, and Meijer are among its customers. Its latest platform expansion Fresh Buying leverages AI to digitize and optimize a challenging job in grocery supply chains: buying perishables for distribution. It helps produce, meat, deli, and bakery buyers manage perishables at scale, letting them react quickly and ensure they ship the freshest products to stores.

to-end supply chain to establish a performance baseline. Within weeks, the teams reported they optimized and validated new congurations to boost capacity and throughput, giving PepsiCo a unied, real-time view of operations, which can integrate AI-driven capabilities over time. Leveraging Siemens’ Digital Twin Composer , NVIDIA Omniverse , and computer vision, PepsiCo can now recreate every machine, conveyor, pallet route, and operator path with physics-level accuracy, enabling AI agents to simulate, test, and rene system changes— identifying up to 90% of potential issues before any physical modications are made.

Walmart Transforms the Retail Supply Chain With AI and Ambient Internet-of-Things

Walmart is combining its AI systems with Wiliot’s ambient IoT technology to enhance supply chain efciency, inventory accuracy, and cold chain compliance. The retailer is using Wiliot’s IoT Pixels to track its pallets, with a goal of reaching 90 million by the end of 2026. This initiative is one of the largest ambient IoT deployments to

date, providing a new source of supply chain data for Walmart’s expanding use of AI. The collaborative solution is currently deployed across 500 Walmart locations, with plans for national expansion

90 MILLION PALLETS BY THE END OF 2026

in 2026. The rollout covers 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and more than 40 distribution centers, generating high-resolution supply chain data that feeds into Walmart’s AI systems.

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