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The Challenge

Digitalising core manufacturing processes with 100 % green energy

Smart Press Shop was determined to set a new industry milestone with a greenfield plant in Germany for automotive component manufacturing – one that would enable the company to deliver small-batch orders costeffectively. Objectives included paperless production and an automated process for configuring the machinery used to press automotive body parts. A key part of the strategy was to accomplish all this with an exceptionally lean IT staff, depending instead on cloud software and IT services from outside partners.

“ Imagine a system automatically making order confirmations based on machine integration instead of

manual confirmations,” said Dr.-Ing. Timo Böhm, Project Manager, Smart Press Shop GmbH & Co. KG.“ This can help streamline production processes and enable a faster inspection and releasing process.”

To turn this vision into reality, Smart Press Shop needed a cloud-first development strategy for building core ERP and manufacturing execution systems( MES). The company wanted to digitalise production from start to finish – and run entirely in the cloud using 100 % green energy.

The Solution

Delivering real-time insight into shop floor manufacturing processes

Smart Press Shop is one of the first organisations to implement SAP Digital Manufacturing solution for execution together with SAP S / 4HANA Cloud, public edition worldwide. Harnessing Industry 4.0 technologies, it was able to integrate the forming of metal or alloy sheets and laser cutting equipment at its new factory with its cloud-based manufacturing execution system( MES).

Implementation moved swiftly with little disruption to daily business and minimal demand placed on in-house IT. The project followed a phased go-live approach to

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