When Unilever developed the new FIFA World Cup–branded body washes, soaps, and deodorants, the consumer-products giant relied on digital twin technology to ensure the limited-edition line was match-ready.
Deodorant stick manufacturing at the company’s Raeford site in North Carolina relied on a virtual replica of physical systems, known as a digital twin, to continuously monitor critical parameters such as temperature, pressure, and flow. Digital twins can be used to observe, analyze, and optimize physical manufacturing equipment and even entire factory floors, enabling manufacturers to simulate production scenarios, identify inefficiencies, and improve their operations. According to Vicky Cuthbert, Chief Product Supply Chain Officer for personal care products at Unilever, this virtual environment identified abnormal patterns earlier, helping engineers understand potential root causes.
“It enables faster decision-making, reduces troubleshooting time, and supports more efficient and reliable production,” Cuthbert told BeautyMatter. “This digital twin has enabled Raeford to efficiently support the production of limited-edition Dove products for the FIFA World Cup 2026.”
As global supply chain pressures persist amid geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and tariffs that have increased input costs, beauty makers have sought to improve their physical operations with digital twins, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and artificial intelligence. These upgrades allow manufacturers to get a real-time view of factory operations, detect issues earlier, conduct more virtual packaging and product innovation to lower costs and reduce waste, improve product quality and consistency, and make workers more productive.
Beauty manufacturers are also feeling pressure from consumers, as social media and AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude have accelerated beauty trend cycles and product discovery. Brands have to respond more quickly, and a heightened area of focus has been speeding up their manufacturing processes.
“When you market brands with a social-first approach, you need an agile supply chain to be able to respond to sudden spikes in demand caused by an influencer,” Cuthbert said. “Supply chains are critical in capturing growth by ensuring the business is ready to fulfill demand whenever that demand materializes, whether online or in store.”
Two major industry players announced significant digital twin initiatives in 2026, highlighting how the technology is becoming more mainstream.
In June, Unilever—maker of Dermalogica skincare and Axe body spray—announced it would work closely with technology consulting firm Accenture to build more than 40 new digital twins over the next 18 months. Unilever said that combining digital twins with AI-powered analytics and autonomous agentic capabilities will help the company simulate production scenarios and identify issues earlier.
And in April, Groupe Rocher announced it would collaborate with 3D software maker Dassault Systèmes to develop virtual twins to speed up the research and development phase of cosmetic products, shortening formulation timelines by cutting the number of trials by 20%.
Globally, the digital twin market is expected to increase from nearly $13 billion in 2023 to $259 billion by 2032, according to Deloitte. The consulting giant's 2025 survey of 600 manufacturing executives found that 80% planned to invest at least 20% of their improvement budgets in smart manufacturing initiatives, including automation hardware, data analytics, sensors, and cloud computing.
Chaz Giles, Chief Executive Officer of the AI consultancy Alida Labs, told BeautyMatter that beauty brands weighing an investment in digital twin technology need to have a clear North Star to understand which narrow use case—be it in formulation or further downstream in the manufacturing process—has the highest probability of shortening product development cycles.
Other factors to consider include understanding how workflows will change with new digital processes and what the main pain points are that a beauty company wants to improve, Giles added. He believes partnerships with outside technology firms are a sound strategy for companies like Unilever and Groupe Rocher.
“As a general rule, I don’t think there are many companies, and especially in the beauty space, that should be developing much technology internally,” Giles said. “They don’t necessarily need to spend the time and energy developing the technology. There are better people to do that faster.”
The competitive edge that beauty brands bring is their data, according to Giles. Data was emphasized by Virginie Fera, Groupe Rocher’s Director of Innovation, Efficiency, and Scientific Communications, who told BeautyMatter that the French company’s team of over 200 researchers had experience working with formulation data, extraction processes, and active ingredient databases built up over decades.
But new investments in virtual twin technology would allow the company to digitally simulate how an active ingredient interacts with skin at the molecular level before entering the lab.
“The virtual twin is designed to work with the proprietary ingredient and efficacy data we have accumulated over 65 years,” Fera said.
On average, Fera added, a new cosmetic formula requires around 30 lab trials before achieving the desired result. Every single trial requires raw materials, worker effort, and, of course, time. Now, Groupe Rocher is planning to test six to eight formulations through simulation. The first results from this new virtual modeling approach are expected by September.
Fera added that some processes will remain in scientists’ hands. “The sensory evaluation, the skin feel, the fragrance, those will always require the human touch,” Fera said. “No algorithm can tell you how a cream feels under your fingertips.”
Estée Lauder said AI and digital twin technologies are a critical pillar of the beauty giant’s “Beauty Reimagined” turnaround plan, which CEO Stéphane de La Faverie debuted in February 2025 to speed up product innovation, bolster sales growth, and increase profit margins.
“For us, a digital twin is not an abstract concept,” Sowmya Gottipati, Senior Vice President of Technology at Estée Lauder, told BeautyMatter. “It is a virtual representation of part of our physical operations that helps teams test, learn, and make better decisions before acting in the real world.”
Gottipati said Estée Lauder’s first digital twin pilot project launched at a manufacturing facility in Japan, where AI-enabled operational visibility and physics-based digital simulations are helping improve line performance, agility, and resilience. Estée Lauder uses virtual simulations before a real-life production run, and then feeds the resulting data back into AI models to ensure they are continually improving.
Historically, Gottipati said, beauty manufacturing required a lot of physical trials with real components and formulas, often requiring a lot of time for an operator to determine the right setup.
But in Japan, where digital twin technology has been deployed, the greatest near-term benefit is tied to new product launches. Gottipati said that virtual simulations help evaluate packaging compatibility, line configurations, and production scenarios before physical trials, allowing teams to resolve issues earlier in the development process, rather than on the production floor.
“We launch faster and with less waste,” Gottipati said. She added that a digital twin “lets a team test many more scenarios than they ever could physically, so the work shifts from running trials to interpreting options, from reacting on the floor to deciding earlier with better information.”
At Unilever, Cuthbert said the company’s Hefei factory in China, where social commerce sales are surging, has an automated factory-to-consumer operation that ships products such as Dove shower gels directly from the production lines to consumers. The site manages more than 31,000 orders per day, across more than 400 products, and fulfills orders 75% faster than before those automation processes were implemented, Cuthbert added.
“Digital twins are a key part of our end-to-end ‘factory of the future’ strategy, complementing the broader automation and digital investments in our operations,” Cuthbert said.
In the years to come, beauty makers are among the manufacturers expected to spend billions more annually on digital twins and AI-enabled tools to improve planning, logistics, product development, and reduce manufacturing downtime. They can then use these interconnected systems to capture a clearer picture of the entire end-to-end supply chain from formulation to the factory floor to the product sitting on the shelf.