In a converted exhibition hall at Manchester Central, engineers gathered this week to watch lines of virtual bottling machinery hum without a single physical component in sight. Siemens used its Transform 2026 event, held on 15 and 16 July, to introduce Digital Twin Composer to customers in the UK and Ireland. The software forms part of the company's Xcelerator platform and was built in partnership with NVIDIA, incorporating its Omniverse libraries.
The tool creates immersive simulations grounded in physics. It fuses industrial AI with real-time operational data so companies can build, test and optimise products, processes and entire facilities before any metal is cut or concrete poured. That shift from guesswork to precise virtual trial reduces the cost of mistakes that once appeared only after expensive prototypes reached the factory floor.
Early users have recorded striking results. At PepsiCo the system flagged up to 90 percent of potential issues before modifications began. Throughput rose by 20 percent, cycle times shortened and capital expenditure fell between 10 and 15 percent. KION ran multiple processes in parallel within the same real-time model, compressing what once took sequential weeks into concurrent testing.
Practical applications across sectors
The demonstrations in Manchester emphasised three immediate pressures on British manufacturers: tightening margins, rising energy costs and the need for faster adaptation. Optimising production lines, cutting emissions through smarter decarbonisation pathways, and refining autonomous systems all surfaced as live use cases. Each example rested on the same logic. Simulate first, spend later.
Brian Holliday, CEO of Siemens UK and Ireland, put it plainly.
Organisations are facing new challenges. Industrial AI and digital twins allow them to test decisions virtually before they cost anything in the physical world.
The remark captures a broader pattern. Rather than chasing distant regulatory targets, firms gain traction by deploying tools that deliver measurable productivity lifts today. Holliday also noted that the software lowers the barrier to creating digital twins, removing much of the specialised coding that once slowed adoption.