There has been a lot of news lately about computer chips. There is another type of “chip” that is also making news: Pringles® potato crisps. The story of that famous chip began in the 1950s when an American organic chemist named Fredric John Baur, Jr., was tasked by his bosses at Procter & Gamble to improve the packaging of potato chips. P&G executives wanted to address consumer irritation with the fact that many chips in a typical bag of potato chips ended up broken into tiny, inedible pieces. Baur apparently spent two years developing saddle-shaped chips from fried dough, and selected a tubular can as the chips' container.

Technology and Pringles’ Origins

The Pringles FAQ page states, “Stop us if you’ve heard this one before — a chemist, a researcher and a science fiction author walk into a kitchen… This isn’t the setup to some joke; it’s actually how Pringles crisps were created. Over the years, hundreds of people have had a hand in making Pringles the delicious snack they are today, but credit for their creation goes to three people: Fredric Baur, Alexander Liepa, and Gene Wolfe.”[1]

Let’s start with Fredric Baur. To help achieve his goal, Baur turned to math and a special shape called a hyperbolic paraboloid (i.e., the “saddle” shape). This special shape gives the chips structural strength and allows for uniform stacking. In 1966, armed with a new chip shape and a tube design to store them, Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked potato chip in the container. The patent was granted in 1971. Unfortunately, Baur’s chips were considered unpalatable. That’s where another P&G researcher, Alexander Liepa, comes into the picture. In the mid-1960s, Liepa was asked to restart Baur's work and improve the chip’s taste. He succeeded and was eventually credited as the inventor on the Pringles patent. According to the Pringles’ website, “Gene Wolfe is credited with being the person to invent the machine that makes Pringles potato crisps. Later on in life he went on to become a science fiction author, publishing more than thirty novels. He also bears a striking resemblance to Mr. P.” When traditional potato chip manufacturers objected to Pringles being called “potato chips,” P&G renamed their product potato “crisps.” The rest is history. Or is it?

Comedian and freelance writer Hebba Gouda likens Pringle chips to “little potato soldiers at attention, each one identical in shape.”[2] She tells a slightly different origin story about how the chip’s shape iconic chip came into being. She writes, “The iconic saddle was designed by IBM supercomputers over two years following Pringles’ introduction in the late 1960s.” She adds, “Does it seem a little over-the-top to sink so many resources, and task the greatest minds in engineering with perfecting the potato crisp? From a personal standpoint, nothing is too important for a perfect snack and how dare you question the commitment to the craft. From a business standpoint, the Pringles’ shape is a brilliant move. The intersecting double curvature prevents an otherwise naturally occurring line of stress, so the chips are less likely to break. The sturdiness means the containers don’t need to be filled with air, like competing brands.”

Whatever combination of stories makes up the true origins of Pringles, it has become one of the most popular snacks in the world. The snack is sold in numerous flavors in more than 140 countries around the world.

The Story Continues

So why is Pringles making new headlines nearly 60 years after its introduction? The answer is automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital twin technology. Journalist Tom Loftus reports, “Kellanova, maker of Pringles chips in Europe, is working with Siemens to perfect the canister-dispensed snack item, an effort employing AI, but also digital twins.”[3] And what is the “perfect” Pringle? According to journalist Isabelle Bousquette, “The perfect Pringle [requires] no broken dough… no sticky chips caught in the fryer… Just a perfect, thin, saddle-shaped golden sliver.”[4] , As Loftus noted, to achieve that perfection, Kellanova executives began working with Siemens. Heading the effort to perfect the chip is Jan Laenen, a senior director of engineering at Kellanova (now owned by the Mars).

Laenen insists the perfect chip begins with the perfect dough. Bousquette reports, “Laenen’s team has been working with Siemens to build a real-time ‘digital twin’ of the Pringle dough as it moves through the production line of the company’s factory in Poland.” The Siemens staff observes, “Traditional dough making once relied on the instincts of seasoned operators — hands, eyes, and years of experience. But digital transformation changed the game. Now, a network of sensors feeds temperature, humidity, protein levels, and other data into an edge-based AI model developed by us. The model calculates the ideal dough recipe in real time and adapts to the uncertainties of the raw materials. Operators get precise recommendations, tweak the formulation accordingly, and keep production flowing without the waste, stops, or yield losses that recipe changes used to cause. Today, this Pringles factory is a digital lighthouse that runs on data — predicting dough quality and delivering uninterrupted production with consistent, top-tier chips.”[5]

And the effort has paid off in a big way. According to Bousquette, “The digital twin project is live and operational on just one line in Poland, where Laenen says it is delivering a 10% improvement in the quality of Pringles produced, a 13% reduction in waste, and an overall 40%-plus return on the $4 to $5 million the company invested in the project.” The following video discusses how the Pringles factory is using automation and AI to make the perfect Pringle.

Siemens staff observes, “Nailing the perfect Pringles chip is getting tougher. Variations in raw materials require careful recipe adjustments to ensure consistent dough quality. Experience used to be their only weapon — now digitalization brings big data to the fight. With a Digital Twin of the dough and AI-driven insights, operators can stabilize the dough like never before and crank line performance into overdrive.”

Concluding Thoughts

Like most efforts involving change, Laenen told Bousquette, “At the end of the day, the biggest hurdle has been the people.”[6] He explained, “In the past, managing the dough on the production line was done by look and feel. ‘Doughmakers’ in the factories would grab a piece of dough off the production line, stretch it out, or grab chips after they come out of the fryer and weigh and measure them. If they detected any issues, they’d tweak the machines after the fact. At first human operators were commonly rejecting the AI model’s recommendations. Since it was predicting something that hadn’t happened yet, they didn’t have a basis for trusting it. But over time they found that the AI predictions would ultimately come to fruition 10 to 15 minutes later. As a result, they became more comfortable with the model’s accuracy.”

Laenen’s experience underscores a long-known principle: Real change involves technology, procedures, and people. Disregard any one of those factors and real change is unlucky to take place.

Footnotes

[1] Staff, “Frequently Asked Questions: All About Pringles,” Pringles.

[2] Hebba Gouda, “Pringles Were Designed by Literal Geniuses,” Sporked, 28 February 2026.

[3] Tom Loftus, “The Other Chip Industry Bets on AI (and Digital Twins),” The Wall Street Journal, 5 August 2026.

[4] Isabelle Bousquette, “Inside the Long, AI-Powered Quest to Perfect Pringle-Making,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 August 2026.

[5] Staff, “Pringles® stacks data to unlock innovation leaps,” Siemans Insights.

[6] Isabelle Bousquette, “Enterprise AI at Work,” CIO Journal email, 5 August 2026.