Nitto Denko transforms with SAP S/4HANA

With a 45-year-old host IT system reaching end-of-life, Nitto Denko (Nitto)—a leading manufacturer of high-performance materials for industrial and electronic components—wanted to introduce a completely new system that could support its global expansion.

The Reborn Project was launched to implement a new multiplatform IT system based on SAP S/4HANA. The goal was to establish a completely new system architecture in which business units, operations and IT run as a unified whole, leveraging standard package functionality to achieve a fundamental reorganization of the company’s workflows.

Accenture consultants and engineers joined the Nitto team, which included the CIO, CFO and key functional stakeholders, to spearhead the development of the new system architecture.

With Nitto producing a wide range of products, each with unique manufacturing processes, production management systems were left in place—the SAP system would encompass all other work processes. And, as the new IT system would eventually be rolled out to Nitto companies around the world, SAP S/4HANA was selected as the global enterprise resource planning (ERP) standard.

The team put a cross-system, multiplatform architecture in place that included a dedicated package system for optimizing warehouse and shipping management, and facilitated the streamlining of complex workflows. It also served as the base interface for data integration across systems and enabled the coordination of the production management systems of each business unit.

With its new, revolutionized IT system, Nitto has been able to make significant improvements in its business agility. With the electronics industry and associated markets changing rapidly, a highly flexible production system enables Nitto to pivot much faster.

The new system also seamlessly connects the workflows of sales, finance, purchasing, procurement, HR and other functional areas, integrating the data needed for management decision-making. With this new workflow, interfaces are reduced by 90% and major change—such as integration of a new business unit or manufacturing site—can be achieved in three months.

Nitto now aims to introduce the new IT system to all of its facilities in Asia, taking performance and stability to even higher levels.