Challenges WEPA needed to replace a 17-year-old dispenser range with a modern, sustainable product family, while accelerating development, reducing rework, improving collaboration, and creating future-ready designs that could serve diverse environments for the next decade and beyond.
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WEPA Hygieneprodukte GmbH is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of professional hygiene products, known for producing high quality paper towels, toilet tissue and washroom dispensing systems for hospitals, airports, offices and public facilities. A family owned company with decades of expertise, WEPA has built its reputation on durability, sustainability and thoughtful design that stands up to heavy daily use.

International industry recognition

Driven by Accenture’s transformation strategy and PTC’s technology, the outstanding design and innovation of WEPA’s new Satino HYGINITY range of dispensers earned numerous prestigious international industry recognition, including:

Challenge: Future-Proofing a sustainable design for different environments

The hygiene market has evolved dramatically, shaped by new expectations around sustainability, touchless interaction and long term durability. WEPA needed to replace a seventeen year old paper towel dispenser line with a modern, cohesive portfolio that could serve airports, hospitals, stadiums and high traffic washrooms with equal reliability. These dispensers typically remain in the market for more than a decade, which is why the chance to redesign an entire product range is both rare and strategically significant.

“Every guest in a washroom has different needs, and our products must meet all of them while surviving decades of use,” said Nik Ruangroj, Head of Brand Marketing at WEPA. “We only redesign our dispensers every ten to fifteen years, so this was our moment to create something truly future ready. It was a once in a generation opportunity to rethink design, sustainability and user experience. We wanted to deliver a breakthrough product family that would set new standards for durability, aesthetics and hygiene performance across professional, retail and MedTech adjacent environments.”

With sustainability becoming a core brand value, WEPA wanted products that were not only robust but also fully recyclable and adaptable to future digital enhancements. The company also faced pressure to accelerate development cycles, reduce rework and ensure audit ready documentation.

Solution: Accenture’s strategic guidance powered by Creo and Windchill

Accenture served as WEPA’s transformation partner, guiding the company from early sketches to a fully engineered, award winning product family. After assessing WEPA’s goals, Accenture used Creo and Windchill to support and execute a new, modular design strategy and a more collaborative development process.

“Accenture helped us move from hand drawings to a complete 3D modeling environment, giving us the clarity and control we needed to create our new Satino HYGINITY range of dispensers,” Ruangroj explained.

Accenture’s industrial design team brought more than 20 years of experience using Creo and Windchill to deliver complex physical products. The global systems integrator widely uses PTC technologies for third party product development globally, including Creo and Windchill.

“We’ve been using Creo and Windchill for many years,” said Frank van der Blom, Senior Design Engineer at Accenture. “Without Creo’s advanced assembly tools and Windchill’s data management, the effort in developing WEPA’s new dispenser range would easily have been one and a half to two times higher.”

Using Creo’s advanced assembly capabilities, Accenture designed more than twenty new dispenser models, each tailored to specific market needs yet unified by a consistent design language. Tool free construction, with no screws and no glue, made every dispenser 100% recyclable and easy to upgrade with smart sensors.

Windchill provided centralized file management and real time collaboration, ensuring that all team members and partners worked from a single source of truth with the latest design, eliminating confusion and accelerating decision making.

Accenture relied heavily on Creo’s top down design approach, skeleton models and published geometry to ensure that changes cascaded automatically across each of the 20 dispenser models within the new range.

“If you change an interface in one model, it regenerates across the whole series,” explained Van der Blom. “Without that functionality, you’d be reinventing the wheel 20 times.”

This structured, modular approach also ensured that learnings from products flowed instantly into later models, a major efficiency gain when releasing a large product family in stages.

Results: Strong demand, operational gains and global recognition

The impact of Accenture’s guidance and PTC’s digital backbone on the Satino HYGINITY dispenser series was immediate and measurable. By moving from hand sketches to a full Creo 3D modeling environment and centralizing all engineering data in Windchill, WEPA accelerated its entire development cycle, bringing more than twenty new dispenser models to market faster than any previous program.

Engineering efficiency rose sharply as teams worked from a single source of truth, reducing rework, improving audit readiness and enabling clearer, faster decision making. Creo’s advanced assembly capabilities supported a modular, future ready product architecture that allowed WEPA to tailor models to different markets while maintaining a unified design language. This same architecture also enabled tool free, 100% recyclable construction and created a natural pathway for smart, sensor enabled upgrades.

These digital and design advances translated directly into commercial and operational gains. Customers immediately recognized the value of the redesigned Satino HYGINITY series, with strong customer demand, strengthening WEPA’s position as a sustainability and innovation leader.

“The response was overwhelming,” added Ruangroj. “Our customers immediately saw the value in the new design, and our HYGINITY roadshow launch drew more than 700 guests, amplifying our visibility and accelerating uptake across Europe. We’ve seen rapid market adoption and strong customer enthusiasm.”

Features engineered in Creo, such as the 360 degree transparent window that shows the filling level indicator, reduced maintenance time for facilities teams, while the modular design extended product life and minimized environmental impact. The combined strength of Accenture’s transformation strategy and PTC’s technology foundation helped WEPA secure three major international design awards, validating the engineering approach and elevating the brand across Europe.

Together, these outcomes established a scalable digital platform that will support WEPA’s next decade of innovation.

“Winning three major design awards in the same year confirmed that we had created something truly exceptional and that our vision resonated far beyond our own industry,” added Ruangroj. “Creo and Windchill enabled us to combine durability, sustainability and aesthetic clarity in a product family that’s been built to last for decades. With Accenture’s guidance and PTC’s modern digital backbone, we’re now extremely well positioned for ongoing innovation.”

“Creo and Windchill enabled us to combine durability, sustainability and aesthetic clarity in a product family that’s been built to last for decades.”

Nik Ruangroj, Head of Brand Marketing, WEPA Hygieneprodukte GmbH

Looking ahead: A platform for continuous innovation

The company plans to expand smart capabilities, deepen sustainability initiatives and continue refining its design language.

“This project didn’t just give us a new product line, it gave us a foundation for the next decade of innovation,” concluded Ruangroj.

Accenture’s structured, modular CAD environment also ensures that WEPA can continue evolving the range without re engineering from scratch, delivering a critical advantage as digital features, sensors and AI supported maintenance capabilities become more prevalent.

Benefits

  • Accelerated product development cycles - 20 new dispenser models brought to market faster than any previous program.
  • Higher engineering efficiency and reduced rework - Windchill eliminated version confusion and manual file chasing, ensuring audit ready documentation and smoother cross functional collaboration.
  • Advanced 3D modeling – Creo helped turn hand sketches into a full 3D environment, unlocking precision, clarity and faster iteration for breakthrough design innovation.
  • Modular, future ready product architecture - Creo’s assembly capabilities enabled a scalable, modular design strategy, allowing WEPA to tailor models to different markets while maintaining a unified design language.
  • Automated regeneration across 20 models – Changes made once in Creo’s top down architecture instantly cascaded through the entire product family, eliminating repetitive rework and ensuring every dispenser benefited from prototype learnings and design refinements.
  • Sustainable design - Creo supported the engineering of no screw, no glue designs, enabling 100% recyclability to meet sustainability goals.
  • Digital extensibility for smart features - The new architecture allows easy integration of sensors and digital upgrades, future proofing the product line.
  • Stronger collaboration - Windchill’s centralized file management ensured real time access to the latest designs, improving decision making and reducing delays.
  • Award winning design excellence - The combination of Accenture’s design leadership and PTC’s tools resulted in multiple awards, validating the engineering and design approach.
  • Future-Proof platform - Scalable digital foundation for the next decade.

Customer overview

  • Industry: Hygiene paper manufacturing
  • Headquarters: Arnsberg Müschede, Germany
  • Employees: 4,300
  • Revenue: €1.7 billion+

About Accenture

Accenture is a global professional services company and a strategic PTC Global Systems Integrator partner. Through Supply Chain & Engineering, Accenture combines deep engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and digital capabilities to help organizations connect product development, operations, and workforce transformation. Working with PTC technologies, Accenture helps clients modernize engineering and manufacturing processes, accelerate innovation, and create lasting business outcomes.