When Schneider Electric India moved its manufacturing operations to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the technology decision triggered a real operational problem. For years, custom reports in SAP ECC had filled a critical gap: manufacturing plants and distribution centers used different strategies, which meant a transport management system—Manhattan TMS—was missing key packaging and volume data from plants. Without that data, logistics teams were guessing how many trucks to schedule. The result was over- or under-planned transport runs, wasted dead space, and delivery delays.

Moving to a clean-core S/4HANA Cloud meant those custom ECC reports had to go. The gap had to be closed a different way.  This is the story of how they did it—and what it means for manufacturers dealing with the same tension between ERP modernization and integration complexity.

What does "clean-core" mean for manufacturing integration?

Clean core is SAP's recommended architecture for S/4HANA Cloud: keep the ERP standard and unmodified, and build extensions alongside it on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) rather than inside the core system. It's a better long-term architecture — SAP-delivered upgrades arrive faster, customizations don't break on release cycles, and the ERP stays stable.

But it creates a practical challenge: processes that previously ran as custom code inside ECC now need to be rebuilt as side-by-side extensions. For a global manufacturer with complex logistics, that's not a trivial exercise.

Schneider Electric India needed a solution that:

• Captured packaging and volume data at plants before it was sent to Manhattan TMS
• Ran entirely outside the SAP S/4HANA core
• Automated daily transport demand creation with no manual effort
• Operated at scale across 80 manufacturing plants

SAP Integration Suite provided the integration backbone that made this possible.

How the solution was built

The team built a fully side-by-side BTP extension using SAP Integration Suite's Cloud Integration capability to transmit daily transport demand data to Manhattan TMS. SAP Advanced Event Mesh handled event-driven processing, triggering demand creation on schedule—with SAP Job Scheduler automating the daily runs so no human intervention was needed.

SAP Datasphere served as the central data layer, consolidating Manhattan data with S/4HANA master and transactional data in near real time using delta extraction. A Fiori-based UI gave logistics teams visibility into the consolidated transport detail before it was transmitted.

The entire stack—integration, event processing, data harmonization, UI—runs on SAP BTP. Zero modifications to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud core.

What did Schneider Electric India achieve?

The results, recognized with a SAP Innovation Awards 2026 Technology Pathfinder award¹, include:

• ~60% expected reduction in dead space—plants now send consolidated, accurate transport demand to Manhattan TMS before trucks are scheduled, eliminating the over- and under-planning that drove wasted capacity
• 100% automation of demand capture—the scheduled job generates and transmits consolidated demand details daily, with no manual effort from logistics teams
• Scaling approximately 400 end users across 80 plants, processing around 24,000 shipments per day.
• Zero SAP S/4HANA core modifications—the entire solution is clean-core, meaning Schneider Electric India keeps the upgrade and innovation benefits of S/4HANA Cloud without customization risk
• Near-real-time data availability—delta extraction from S/4HANA Cloud to SAP Datasphere reduces application complexity and improves logistics response time

This is what enterprise integration looks like when it solves a concrete business problem—not just connecting systems, but enabling a business outcome that wasn't possible before.

Why this matters for manufacturers evaluating cloud ERP

Schneider Electric India's story is specific, but the pattern is common in manufacturing: a move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud exposes an integration gap that custom ECC code had quietly been filling for years.

The choice manufacturers face at that moment is telling. Some recreate the customization in the new environment, taking on the same long-term maintenance overhead in a different location. Others build the capability the right way — outside the core, on an integration platform designed for it.

SAP Integration Suite's position within the SAP BTP ecosystem makes it the natural fit for the second path. It already holds master data and transactional context from S/4HANA. It connects directly to third-party logistics systems like Manhattan TMS. And it supports both event-driven processing for real-time scenarios and scheduled batch transmission for daily demand runs — within the same platform.

Other SAP manufacturers have followed a similar path with measurable results:

• Kemira Oyj, a €3.6B Finnish chemicals company, migrated 363 interfaces from on-premise middleware to SAP Integration Suite, cutting interface setup time by 50% and processing 1.2 million messages between systems every week.²
• Komax Group, a Swiss industrial machinery manufacturer operating across 60+ countries, completed a full ERP harmonization with zero escalations at go-live — running the entire cutover remotely — with SAP Integration Suite providing connectivity for their new master data management system. Their EVP noted that SAP Integration Suite gives them the foundation to "harvest innovations" like AI, Industry 4.0, and IoT for their customers.³
• Maxion Wheels, an automotive manufacturer running 24 plants, cut sales report generation from 3 days to 2 hours — with live updates in 10 seconds — by connecting SAP ERP instances and SAP Datasphere through SAP Integration Suite.⁴

The thread across these manufacturers: SAP Integration Suite handled the integration complexity so teams could focus on the outcome — faster processes, better data, and a foundation ready for what comes next.

Is your manufacturing integration ready for the cloud?

For manufacturers at the start of this journey, the practical first step is an Integration Assessment—a structured workshop to map your current landscape, identify consolidation opportunities, and prioritize where integration investment will deliver the fastest return.

Manufacturers that are planning an S/4HANA migration or already in one, the integration layer deserves the same architectural attention as the ERP itself. Clean-core only works if the side-by-side extensions are designed properly—and that requires an enterprise integration platform that can handle real-time event processing, scheduled batch jobs, third-party logistics connectivity, and SAP-native data flows from a single, governed environment.  SAP Integration Suite currently processes 30 billion messages per month across 2.4 million deployed integration flows, used by more than 14,000 customers worldwide.⁵

If your manufacturing operations are carrying integration debt—custom ECC code, point-to-point middleware, or multiple platforms managing different parts of the landscape—now is the moment to address it. An integration platform as a service built for the SAP ecosystem removes the gap between what the ERP delivers and what the business needs.