PMMI’s Inaugural CPG NexGen Award winners are delivering measurable advances in automation, productivity, sustainability, and packaging to transform how CPG products are made. One of these 10 rising innovators is Hayden Bivens, Technical Packaging Engineer at PepsiCo. He is being recognized for helping to modernize a weight-verification system across 1,400+ machines and 34 facilities. I reached out to him to learn more.
PW: How long have you been in your current role?
Bivens: I have been with PepsiCo for a little over three years and have spent the last two in my current role as a Technical Packaging Engineer. During that time, I have worked on a wide range of automation, manufacturing technology, and continuous improvement initiatives across our packaging departments.
PW: What is your work experience prior to this?
Bivens: Before joining PepsiCo full-time, I interned with the company while still in school. I also spent time in the oil and natural gas industry working on cathodic protection systems. Those experiences exposed me to large-scale industrial operations early in my career and confirmed that I enjoyed solving problems in manufacturing environments.
PW: How did you end up in packaging? What school did you attend?
Bivens: I studied Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. I actually did not set out with the goal of working in packaging. As I gained more exposure to manufacturing, I found myself drawn to the challenges and opportunities within packaging. I have always enjoyed understanding how things work and finding ways to make them better, and manufacturing gave me an opportunity to do that every day. Packaging ended up being a great fit because it gives me the chance to solve technical problems while working closely with operations teams to make real improvements.
PW: What do you enjoy most about your job?
Bivens: The people and the opportunity to solve challenging problems. I have always enjoyed digging into complex challenges and figuring out how things can work better. Some of the most rewarding moments come from partnering with operations and site teams to turn an idea into something that improves their day-to-day work. Seeing those improvements make a real impact is what keeps the job exciting.
PW: PMMI just awarded you a 2026 CPG NexGen Award for modernizing a weight-verification system across 1,400+ machines and 34 facilities, with an estimated $800,000 in annual productivity savings. Tell me about that project and its impact on the company.
Bivens: The project focused on modernizing and optimizing a legacy weight-verification system. It gave me the opportunity to work closely with teams across engineering, operations, quality, and IT to solve challenges that sites had been dealing with for years. What made it especially rewarding was seeing the impact across so many facilities. Early in your career, opportunities to work on something with that kind of reach do not come along very often. The project helped improve efficiency, reduce waste, and deliver meaningful productivity gains across the network, but what I am most proud of is that it also made day-to-day work easier for the operators using the system. Seeing those teams benefit from something we built was incredibly rewarding. To me, the best engineering solutions are the ones that not only improve performance but also make people's jobs a little easier.
PW: Can you explain the project in more detail?
Bivens: The project focused on modernizing a weight-verification system used across our manufacturing network. In a typical vertical form-fill-seal packaging line, an inline combination weigher measures and fills each package, while a high-precision offline scale is used to verify those measurements at a set interval. The weight-verification system acts as the "handshake" between those two scales, using data from both to help ensure products are filled accurately and remain compliant. The system needs to work across multiple generations of weighing technology, from equipment dating back to the 1990s through today’s newer systems. As weighing technology evolved, there was an opportunity to improve how those systems worked together, better leverage the capabilities of newer equipment, and reduce unnecessary manual intervention for operators.
I led the technical development of the solution, including creating and validating a new mathematical methodology, updating the weigher software, and developing the supporting IT infrastructure needed to deploy the solution across more than 1,400 machines. One of the biggest challenges was understanding a system that had evolved over multiple decades and generations of equipment. Before I could improve it, I had to work through technical documentation, historical design records, and real-world system behavior to develop a complete understanding of how the methodology functioned across different operating conditions. That understanding became the foundation for building and validating a modernized approach that could be successfully deployed at scale.
The project required extensive analysis, testing, and validation before deployment. Working closely with operators was equally important. Their feedback helped identify opportunities for improvement, and building confidence in the new approach was critical to successful adoption. Following implementation, we saw reduced waste, less manual verification work, and meaningful productivity gains across the network. For operators, that meant spending less time managing exceptions and more time focusing on running their lines effectively.
PW: How has AI changed your day-to-day job?
Bivens: AI has become a valuable tool in my day-to-day work. It helps me organize information and spend less time on routine tasks. I view it as a tool that complements engineering work rather than replaces it. The real value comes from combining technology with the experience, creativity, and judgment of the people using it.
PW: How do you see your industry changing in the next 5-10 years?
Bivens: I think we are going to see continued growth in automation, AI, and connected manufacturing systems. Companies have access to more data than ever before, and the challenge will be turning that information into actionable insights that improve performance. At the same time, evolving consumer expectations and sustainability goals will continue pushing the industry to innovate.
PW: What has the biggest impact on company packaging decisions? Consumer preference, regulations, sustainability pressures, etc.?
Bivens: Safety and quality always come first. From there, packaging decisions are shaped by a number of factors, including consumer preferences, sustainability goals, regulatory requirements, and operational efficiency. The challenge is finding solutions that address those considerations while continuing to deliver for consumers.
