Future-proof SAP platform with SAP S/4HANA Greenfield

It weighs more than five tonnes, works with six bar of compressed air, has a drive power of 38 kW and can press no less than one million tablets in one hour - the KTP 720X from Romaco Kilian, a tablet press for the pharmaceutical industry. The machine cools the process area to below 30 °C so that it can also process heat-sensitive products such as the painkiller ibuprofen.

It is products like the KTP 720X that have earned Romaco Kilian an excellent reputation as a technology leader in special machine construction for the pharmaceutical industry over the past decades. The company's numerous patents are also proof of its approach to developing and bringing to market the best possible solutions for demanding customers all over the world.

A high-tech company like Romaco Kilian naturally also needs a powerful IT system landscape with which the company can maintain and improve its own competitiveness, simplify business processes or, for example, also map customer order production with variant configuration of the various solutions and products in an integrated manner.

Change management of high importance

Process-wise and technically, the SAP S/4HANA project implemented according to the SAP Activate approach model had a considerable scope - from development to customer order entry including variant configuration, from production to aftersales business (service, spare parts, conversions and retrofits).

Another essential part of the project was change management: developing a common understanding of the meaning and necessity of the SAP S/4HANA project and preparing the Kilian organisation for the implementation.

"A particular highlight of the project for me was that we replaced the order database, which had previously been maintained manually, with digital documentation of the individual machines in SAP S/4HANA: a Digital Twin - in other words, a virtual image of the physical machines," says Achim Krämer, Project Manager at GAMBIT Consulting. And Romaco Kilian is already planning further expansion stages of the "Twin", namely the continuous digital documentation of changes due to conversions and service measures.

Well planned and successful go-live

"Overall, we did make somewhat slower progress than originally planned during the pandemic, but this had many reasons, including some changes in our project organisation. Nevertheless, we fully achieved the project goal thanks to the good and professional cooperation in the entire team, experienced a smooth go-live at the beginning of 2022 and are now implementing follow-up projects with GAMBIT," says Jens Carstens, Managing Director of Romaco Kilian.