In this panel discussion, leaders from Pringles and Siemens share how a strategic partnership is reshaping production in the consumer packaged goods industry through digital twins, AI-based process control, and a long-term vision for the industrial metaverse.
Ronny Matthijs, Plant Director at Uma Investments Sp. z o.o., describes the core challenge facing large-scale food manufacturing: natural ingredient variability that makes consistent, predictable production difficult to achieve. Relying on operator experience alone was no longer sufficient as demand grew and efficiency fluctuated. The tu...
What Cedrik Neike said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Cedrik Neike, CEO of Digital Industries at Siemens, discussed the CPG industry's need for technology, noting it is worth $2.5-3 trillion with only 10% large enterprises and that 75% of food production comes from 15 plants and 5 animals. He highlighted the Pringles partnership as a key example of the Digital Enterprise for CPG, where AI-based process control and digital twins enable infinite learning and experimentation. Neike emphasized that connected environments allow recipes to go from concept to production in a day, not six months, and can shift products globally. He cited a 7% energy reduction in crisp production as a significant sustainability gain. He criticized pilot-heavy approaches, joking that companies have more pilots than Lufthansa, and stressed the need for continuous Digital Thread thinking. Neike concluded that great taste need not produce great waste, and praised Pringles as high-tech-minded partners.
Key takeaways
CPG industry worth $2.5-3 trillion, only 10% large enterprises, 75% food from 15 plants and 5 animals.
Produced a crisp using 7% less energy, a significant saving across billions of crisps.
Criticized pilot-heavy approaches, joking companies have more pilots than Lufthansa.
Great taste does not need to produce great waste of data, time, or energy.
Super. Let's take a seat on the Sofa of Wisdom. How are you doing? Great. Thank you. Very good. I think this kind of looks like a football club, I have to say. But these are the right fans, right here on the sofa. Let me quickly introduce who's joining me here. We've got Daniel Klein. He's Vice President Consulting at Siemens. Daniel, I think I can say you've become Siemens' chief Pringles tester during this process.
And actually, this gentleman won the crunch experiment this morning with 99 decibels, I think. We had the big kickoff this morning and asked who could make a crisp crunch the loudest, because we're using technology to optimize this.
Cedrik won. He's a member of the Managing Board and CEO of Digital Industries. So I think there are a lot of crisps on the boardroom desks when you have your meetings, judging by that crunching success. Now, Cedrik, let me start with you. You've worked with many companies in the CPG industry globally. You've visited customers around the world. What global trends are you currently seeing in the CPG industry?
Well, let's take a step back. I really, really like food. I like chocolate, I like crisps, and in some ways, I have a sweet tooth. So I like this industry, and I love talking about microchips, but also potato chips, right? These technologies are incredibly important. CPG is one of the world's largest industries, worth I think, between 2.5 and 3 trillion dollars. It isn't highly consolidated; only around 10% consists of large enterprises. And it carries enormous responsibility, because we need to understand what technology can do, since so many people depend on this industry. They depend on its quality and taste. They also depend on its sustainability. So technology can help make products better, production more efficient, and solve supply-chain challenges. One thing that amazed me is that 75% of food production comes, I think, from just 15 different types of plants and only five types of animals. We need to ensure that this is managed sustainably and developed in the right direction. It is a great industry. It is a great industry that needs a lot of technology. It also has visionaries like Pringles, who ask how we can make products taste even better. And I think that is why the Digital Enterprise for Consumer Packaged Goods is one of our key examples. Sorry for the long answer. I'm French; I love food.
Yes. First of all, I like the cooking analogy. If you look at how food is made overall, making Pringles is basically the same. The only difference is the scale. At home, on a small scale, when ingredients are slightly off, you simply adjust. In our case, we're producing Pringles at large scale. We run multiple lines 24/7. The smallest variation can immediately affect thousands of products within minutes. And that brings me to the real challenge in the food industry: variability. Historically, production was mainly about reacting to changes, with people using their knowledge and experience to adjust the parameters in the dough process. They relied on intuition and expertise. And don't get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with that. But you are always one step behind the process. That is the problem we wanted to solve together with Siemens. We wanted to combine our process knowledge with Siemens' digital capabilities to build a digital twin. And that is exactly what we have done, including a way to scale it. Now we can see how the dough behaves in real time. We can see how it is likely to evolve and guide the process before issues occur. For me, that is real transformation: not just new technology in our factory, but a system in which people and technology work together to make production scalable, predictable, and consistently high-quality.
Neike, C. (2026, July 20). AI-Based Process Control at Scale: Pringles and Siemens on Digital Transformation in CPG [Interview transcript]. Siemens. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1104446/
MLA
Cedrik Neike. "AI-Based Process Control at Scale: Pringles and Siemens on Digital Transformation in CPG." Siemens, 20 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1104446/.
BibTeX
@misc{neike2026_1104446,
author = {Cedrik Neike},
title = {AI-Based Process Control at Scale: Pringles and Siemens on Digital Transformation in CPG},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Siemens. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jul},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1104446/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
