Global Transformation with SAP Digital Manufacturing at INTERPRINT
INTERPRINT GmbH, part of the Japanese TOPPAN Group, is a global leader in decorative surface solutions for the furniture, wood-based panel, and flooring industries. With around 1,600 employees and production sites across Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, INTERPRINT operates in a highly customized and demanding market environment.
INTERPRINT faced the challenge of transforming a historically evolved and heterogeneous production IT landscape into a globally standardized and future-proof platform—without compromising the high degree of flexibility required for its customer-specific manufacturing processes.
Initial Situation: High complexity and a fragmented system landscape
Over the decades, INTERPRINT’s production and IT landscape had evolved into a highly heterogeneous environment:
- SAP R/3 as the core ERP system, extensively customized to meet specific business requirements
- Different MES solutions across production sites (e.g., a non-SAP MES in Germany and custom ERP-based developments at other locations)
- Lack of standardized MES structures and processes
- High maintenance and support efforts
Additional challenges included:
- Strong customer dependency with a high degree of product and process customization
- Complex manufacturing processes requiring end-to-end traceability
- Increasing pressure to modernize due to the end of SAP R/3 maintenance support
As a result, INTERPRINT operated a heterogeneous and difficult-to-scale system landscape without a clearly defined global MES strategy.
Objective: Standardization and Global Scalability
INTERPRINT defined clear objectives for the transformation:
- Introduction of SAP S/4HANA (on-premises) as the global ERP platform
- Implementation of a unified Manufacturing Execution System (SAP Digital Manufacturing)
- Harmonization of production processes across all sites
- Reduction of system complexity and custom developments
- Establishment of a global rollout template
The overall goal was to create a future-proof digital platform that combines global standardization with the flexibility required to support highly customized manufacturing processes.
Solution: Global Template Based on SAP Digital Manufacturing
concircle implemented a scalable MES solution based on SAP Digital Manufacturing for INTERPRINT, while the SAP S/4HANA transformation was delivered by Business Advice. To support the global transformation, a rollout template was developed based on standard SAP processes and enhanced with targeted custom extensions where required.
The solution integrates SAP S/4HANA, SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM), and SAP Digital Manufacturing, enabling end-to-end multi-level traceability and supporting highly complex, variant-rich production processes.
Additional custom developments, such as a tool for managing classification characteristics, provide a high degree of manufacturing flexibility and enable the efficient implementation of INTERPRINT’s specific business requirements.
Challenges in the Project
The implementation was carried out in a highly complex transformation environment:
- Strong dependencies on the timeline and milestones of the SAP S/4HANA transformation project
- Parallel rollout activities across multiple production sites
- A very high number of classification characteristics requiring both read and write operations
- Complex batch number range logic with specific business requirements
Through flexible resource planning, close collaboration between all project stakeholders, and efficient integration cycles, these challenges were successfully addressed and managed throughout the program.
Results: Scalable MES Platform for Global Rollouts
With the new system landscape based on SAP S/4HANA, SAP Digital Manufacturing, and SAP EWM, INTERPRINT significantly reduced system complexity while improving scalability, transparency, and maintainability.
The harmonized platform establishes cross-site standards, simplifies global rollouts, and accelerates the integration of new plants and production lines. At the same time, INTERPRINT benefits from more efficient operations and support processes, as well as improved data availability throughout the manufacturing process.
The standardized yet flexible platform enables efficient global rollouts with minimal implementation effort. This has already been successfully demonstrated through rollouts in Turkey and Spain.
In addition, the solution provides a future-proof foundation for further expansion at sites in Brazil, Poland, Malaysia, and the United States.
The first successful go-lives have already been completed:
- Germany (June 2025)
- Turkey (March 2026)
- Spain (May 2026)
Our collaboration with concircle was highly cooperative and solution-oriented throughout the entire project. We were particularly impressed by the rapid support provided, especially in the post-go-live phase, as well as the team’s deep understanding of our industry-specific requirements.
Even when faced with highly specialized challenges, the concircle team was always committed to working closely with us to find the right solution. In addition, concircle demonstrated broad and profound expertise across the SAP landscape, which proved invaluable to the success of the project.
Conclusion: Future-proof manufacturing with SAP DM
By implementing SAP Digital Manufacturing as part of the SAP S/4HANA transformation, INTERPRINT successfully transitioned from a fragmented legacy system landscape to a modern, scalable, and globally harmonized manufacturing platform.
The combination of standardization and targeted customization enables INTERPRINT to efficiently map even highly complex and customer-specific requirements.
The project also demonstrates how concircle’s industry expertise in length-based manufacturing is bundled within the conMILL Suite (SAP DM add-on), making proven solutions and best practices available to customers facing similar challenges.
👉 Learn more about our conMILL Suite for the mill industry (paper, packaging, metal, textile, and plastics): https://www.concircle.com/kompetenzen/conmill-suite/
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