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Introducing Emydex EQMS – Electronic Quality Management System

The Emydex Electronic Quality Management System (EQMS) has undergone a major redesign and redevelopment over the past 12 months, with significant input from some of Emydex’s largest multi-plant beef, lamb, pork and seafood processors operating in Ireland, the UK, Africa and Australia.

Taking all the learnings and experiences gained from previous Emydex QC system implementations; this latest release of the Emydex QC module is a fully comprehensive and extensive QMS system, designed to cater for the needs of large Enterprise-level food processing organisations.

The system is ideally suited to group-level food processors operating different business divisions, spanning different geographies, offering both real-time and accurate reporting on QC activities, at both group and individual plant-level via the Emydex QC cloud-hosted platform.

Maintain a sky-level overview of QC activities across divisions and operations within the organisation, in real-time

Cloud v On-Premises: In addition to hosting in the cloud, the system can alternately be installed on-premises if required.

Small v Large: It can also cater just as effectively for both small and medium-sized meat, fish and food processing plants, as well as larger production operations.

EMYDEX QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM DEMO VIDEO

Key features include:

BUILD

QC Workflow Builder: one of the most significant improvements to the Emydex QMS, is a major design and development effort focussed on developing an easy-to-use, yet comprehensive QC workflow builder tool.

This application allows in-house Technical and QC personnel (non-IT people) to design and build their own Quality workflows in-house, including QC surveys, QC check sheets and quality audits, without the need to involve either Emydex developers or internal IT resources.

The result is an easy-to-use, icon-driven workflow builder application, powered by Question Blocks that can be saved as templates, and re-used from one quality survey to the next.

Workflows can include conditional responses such as ‘if the answer is X do A, if Y then B’, and includes Action Plans such as notifying supervisors, generating follow-up actions, sending emails, reminders, notifications, triggering CAPA workflows etc.

Configure QC workflows from scratch. Determine what questions to ask, and how best to capture the information needed.

CAPTURE

QC Workflow Data Capture: once QC workflows have been designed and tested they can be executed on the factory floor. Workflow surveys can be validated by running them in ‘test mode’ in which case, the test transactions are saved separately from ‘live’ QC data.

QC data capture can be carried out using a range of data capture hardware devices including existing fixed-position Industrial terminals, rugged tough-books or even low-cost tablet devices running the Windows 10 operating system.


Capture QC data such as CAPA workflows on low-cost tablet devices running Windows 10


Capture QC data such as Product Quality Checks on rugged Toughbook devices for harsh environments

Emydex Production System Look-up & Validation – One major advantage of the Emydex QC module, is that food processors who have also implemented an Emydex Factory Floor Production Control and Traceability reporting system in their operations, can scan product barcodes, retrieve traceability details, and perform validation from the Emydex QC system against production data stored in their Emydex Production system, something not possible with independent 3rd party QC systems.


Kill line QC inspections – logging QC faults against Carcasses within Emydex Production systems

REPORT

Instant Back-office Reporting via Plant Maps & Dynamic Data Views – whether operating in a single plant or group plant operation, managers and supervisors will have real-time access to QC data captured as it happens.

The QC module plant map drill-downs allow supervisors to ‘manage by exception’ drilling down to the areas where any QC issues or non-conformances are raised, to investigate and raise actions as needed.


Drill-down plant maps enable issues & non-conformances to be identified and actioned quickly

QC Data can also be viewed using Data Grids and Views that can be configured by users themselves, and saved as personal templates; allowing data to be grouped, sorted, filtered, analysed and exported to Word, Excel or Email if needed.

 Customise the way you view results, and decide what information you want to see and when

Emydex Report Writer – Emydex’s QC report writing application can also be used to prepare printed reports that can match exactly the format of the original paper-based QC surveys and check-sheets if required.


Original Paper-based QC Survey

Same QC data presented in similar report format post electronic data capture on an Emydex QC device

Other features worth highlighting include:

Production Calendars

Create multiple production calendars. Outline schedules relative to hours of operation.

Production Schedules

Create Schedules to control what needs to be done and when? Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly schedules

(1) Pre-production (2) Post-production or (3) During production at set interval checks – you decide

Schedule Workflows

Schedule Workflows with a click of a button. Apply zero, one or many schedules to a workflow as required

Roles & Responsibilities

Assign QC Workflows only to those responsible for them. Assign Actions only to those with the authority to complete them.

Missed Workflow Notifications

Quality System will track missed Workflows. Automatically notify when a workflow is missing or not completed as scheduled.

Organisation

Assign QC Workflows to different Plants, Areas and Roles. Track what needs to be done where?

Equipment


Manage Equipment Lists. Create Preventative maintenance quality checks for equipment.

Actions Console

Log into your personal QC Actions console. Track all your Quality System Actions. See only Actions you are responsible for.

To organise an Online demonstration or request a 30-day free trial of the Emydex QMS System, please get in touch with Emydex on sales@emydex.com or call us via our contact numbers

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Rosie & Jim Value Added Poultry Processor live on Emydex

Dublin – Ireland:
Rosie and Jim was established in 1997 when award winning craft butcher, Jimmy McLoughlin established Quality First Ltd and began producing gourmet chicken products for supply to butcher shops and restaurants. Today the company produces a wide range of premium quality, ready-to-cook gluten free breaded and battered chicken products.  They also produce a variety of delicious filled wraps.  All products are available chilled or frozen.

Order Control

Rosie and Jim approached Emydex in 2016 with a view to implementing a factory-wide Production Control and Traceability Reporting IT system door-to-door. The company had no existing factory floor IT system in place, operating manual processes instead, which meant excessive recording of internal processes manually on paper, which was both laborious and time-consuming, and offered little by way of real-time production control and traceability reporting.

The company had no real insight into the quantity or value of their existing stocks, resulting in procurement planning issues. Unsure of what current stocks were available to fulfil production orders, often resulted in over-ordering of stock, and the holding of excess stock of raw materials, dry goods and ingredients on-site than was needed.

Recipe Formulation

Another issue Rosie and Jim faced from their manual process was knowing how much each production batch cost to produce. Without knowing the precise amount of raw materials and ingredients going into each production batch, and without knowing the exact value of that stock, it was impossible to accurately calculate profit/loss and production yields.

Emydex’s Recipe Formulation Software system means that now, every item is scanned and weighed into a production job in the correct quantities. The system allows Rosie & Jim to track and record every item right down to the smallest measurement that was used in a production job. By doing this, Emydex determines the value of items used in production batches, allowing the system to calculate the cost of each production batch.

Real-Time Traceability Reporting

At Intake, Emydex allocates an internal traceability number (ITN) to each batch of supplier goods received, and the goods are labelled with barcodes and stored. From this point forward, the goods are tracked and traced by factory operators using hand-held scanning terminals, throughout the different stages of production, up to the point of sales order picking and dispatch, This allows for real-time traceability reporting throughout the plant, both for forward trace reporting from suppliers to end-customers, as well as backwards.

Sage Integration

Prior to go-live, Emydex was tightly integrated with Rosie & Jim’s existing Sage 200 accounting system, with Purchase Orders and Sales Orders pulled down from stage, and well as production data sent back to Sage for invoicing of customers and supplier payments.

Go-live

“We started using Emydex on the floor in two separate stages. First, we launched Emydex on our breading line while still using test data. This included the recipe blending and packing. By the end of the first week most of the production team using the system were already comfortable with using it. You could visibly see them speeding up when going through the individual screens.  

We also started to receive goods in from Intake onto the system. This has been simplest of part of the implementation. We soon after went live proper on the 1st of April. We first implemented Emydex on our mixes & tortilla line and began to pick our sales orders via the hand-held scanners. Overall, I feel the project was a successful implementation, and the new system has been well received by our production team, operators and supervisors, better than I could have expected”.

Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

Production Reporting

Rosie and Jim now have a comprehensive reporting structure on all aspects of their production processes. The Emydex back-office reporting module provides the company with a number of different views over their cost/value figures including Real-time stock inventory and valuation, Production costing, Production costing variances, Product usage reports, production yield reports and product giveaway reports.

Emydex also worked with Rosie and Jim to develop additional reports such as Production & packing time efficiency reports and daily stock movement reports.

“From a reporting side, by the end of the first week, our production manager and I started to see proper results with regards to yields, packing volumes and stock control. I would like to thank the Emydex team as they really helped, not only with the actual development but also with suggesting practical solutions to suit our processes e.g. line-side management.”

further comments by Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

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Emydex Coldstore Management System Live in Dawn Meats UK

Halesowen – England:
Dawn Meats are one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British Beef and Lamb in Europe. They supply premium quality beef and lamb products to over 40 countries worldwide. Since 2007, Emydex software has been Dawn’s system of choice for factory floor data capture, production control, stock management and traceability reporting. Emydex iWAMS has been implemented as the groups standard solution in their 15 production sites located across Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France.

Stock Management

In 2014 Dawn Meats bought a 99,000 sq ft distribution center in Birmingham, England for freezing, distributing and storing meat products. The Halesowen facility provides cold storage services for all of Dawn’s manufacturing plants in the UK.
Installed in 2015, the Emydex cold store warehouse system operating at the Halesowen site, provides Dawn Meats with a warehouse management system that manages, controls and reports on all cold storage processes at the plant. These processes include goods inwards, stock palletising, blast-freezing, stock put-away, sales order picking, container loading and order dispatch. In addition, the Emydex platform provides Dawn with the capability to carry out stock transfers, stock takes and stock reconciliation. This in turn provides the business (and entities owning the stock) with real-time accurate reporting of stocks.

Synchronized

Electronic links, which keep the sites Emydex systems synchronized with the Halesowen Emydex system, are in place between the Halesowen cold storage facility and each of Dawn’s production plants in the UK. These links are architected on Emydex’s proprietary ‘E-Transfer’ functionality. This enables the individual sites to send and receive real-time validation and reporting on all stock items shipped into and dispatched out of the cold store. Real-time transactional data on internal stock movements, pallet break-down and sales orders dispatched to customers are also sent via automated electronic E-Transfers.

ERP Integration

“Our requirement was to implement a solution in the Halesowen facility that would meet the needs of a cold storage business whilst also providing the individual sites with visibility into their cold-store stocks and all associated handling and storage costs. In our business model it was important to us that the sites retained the ability to select the individual units they wanted to be picked in order to best meet the needs of each customer.

It was clear that this would require tight integration between the production sites Emydex systems and whatever cold-storage solution was chosen. The Emydex Cold Storage system met most of the requirements of the business as standard. The inherent flexibility within the Emydex platform meant we were confident that we could work with their development team to tailor Emydex to fit our exact needs.

For example, Emydex were able to add functionality to the system to allow for box-level traceability throughout the blast freeze process. For our business, Emydex was definitely the right choice”.

Shane Slattery, CIO with Dawn Meats

Emydex software is integrated with Dawn’s central ERP system. This integration is architected using web-services to allow for complete control over the sales and purchase ordering processes. The ERP integration allows Dawn to draw down sales orders in real-time, manage picking rules, assign sales orders and print customer specific documentation.

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Clogherhead Fishermen’s Co-Op: Labelling at Sea

Fish Processing – Clogherhead Fishermen’s Co-Op

Clogherhead Fisherman’s Co-Op, is a leading Irish Seafood producer based in Clogherhead, Co. Louth, on the East Coast of Ireland. This video describes how Clogherhead Co-Op use Emydex’s Production Management and Traceability software on their fleet of trawlers as well as throughout their processing factory for data capture, labelling of product at sea, landings, into-warehousing, sales order picking and dispatch, providing Clogherhead Co-Op with real-time and accurate Traceability reporting from boat-to-truck.

Emydex’s Labelling at Sea software operating on the fleet of twelve frozen at sea trawlers, enables on-vessel printing, meaning product arrives to shore already labelled, saving time and ensuring full Traceability from the boat to the customer.

<!–Clogherhead Co-Op Video–>

Fish Processing and Traceability

Processing and Traceablility

Project Highlights

“The key for me is that Emydex were able to provide Clogherhead with their standard fish system built in consultation with BIM (Irish Fisheries Board), the SFPA (Seafood Fisheries Protection Agency), as well as the GS1 (Global Standards agency), but allow Clogherhead to tailor and tweak the system to suit our specific needs and processes exactly.
Aside from our old factory floor system, we also previously operated a bespoke-built boat invoicing and payments system.

Emydex were able to configure and build into their standard Fish system, the very same functionality as our previous system, meaning we now have everything we need in a single system, supported in-life by the Emydex support team. After a year at sea, the Co-op that includes the factory and fleet of boats all see the efficiencies and savings realised from our new labelling-at-sea systems”

Paul Boyd, Managing Director – Clogherhead Co-Op

“This project included a first for Emydex, in that our software is now operating on a fleet of boats in an offline environment, but at the same time has proved very successful. Hopefully over time this is something that will be adopted by the fishing industry as a whole”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO

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Yield & Costing Analysis in the Food industry

NORTH AMERICA:

The food industry is no different than any other complex manufacturing business whose goal is to make a profit. If you are not able to calculate your true manufacturing cost, it could lead to lost profits, orders and customers. To remain profitable, you need to answer a number of questions; Are you pricing your products to make a profit? Are you producing the products at the cost you calculated? Are you contributing to overhead and profit levels to meet your strategic business goals?

In the food industry, there are very small margins, making it difficult for food companies to achieve and maintain profitability. One of the first lessons of accounting is the equation of Profit = Revenues – Costs

In the food industry, the volumes are fairly flat, growth is slow, so food processing companies need to be focused on managing costs as the best option to improve profitability. Determining what are the product and customer costs is not as simple as it seems in the food industry. Over the last 15 years many food companies have either gone out of business or been bought out by a larger company due to lack of profit.

Current state of ERP vendors able to support the food industry costing

Food companies are not able to calculate accurate costs with their current software systems due to limitations in these systems required to support food industry requirements. The quality and specification of raw materials vary significantly from vendor to vendor and at different times of the year. This is especially true in the meat industry where each species carcass is a different size and weight, so for example, each ham or loin produced has different amounts of lean/fat, bone and trim.

The process of blending, mixing and cooking can produce different yield losses depending on the attributes of the raw materials used, and the setup of the equipment. ERP vendor software is not designed to track and measure yield loss tracking as the product moves through the various food production processes.

Due to the limitations in the costing functionality, many companies use manual (spreadsheet) calculations to determine product costs. While spreadsheets may work for smaller, ad-hoc analysis, they fall short in handling massive complex costing processes due to their limitations with scalability, data integrity, integration and security. They are also open to clerical error (no validation), and are typically reliant on a few key individuals within the organisation. The ‘hit by a bus’ risk is a cause for concern.

Furthermore, manual cost calculations are then fed into some type of profitability analysis, but the challenge is that the manual data capture is flawed, making these analyses less than optimal. For food companies to survive in the current economy they require accurate and complete profitability information.

Addressing the challenge of calculating costs

From the big picture perspective, it is relatively easy to calculate profit. Total up all your revenue and expense accounts and calculate the difference between the two. This tells you that in total income made or lost, but at a macro level. The calculation of profit for specific products or customers can easily explode into a massive undertaking. Companies do not know where to look to address their profitability issues.

The current situation of limitations of profitable reporting is a direct correlation with the challenges the food manufacturers face when calculating accurate cost results – lack of an automated costing process, substantial manual processes, lack of operational measurement to ensure accuracy of results and lack of granularity.

Food companies have tried different approaches to address the costing requirement. They have tried sophisticated spreadsheets, in some cases using a network of complex spreadsheets. Others have attempted to modify their ERP or Financial (GL) systems to handle the advance costing needs of the food industry, but often these modifications fail to deliver a comprehensive cost system. Lastly, companies have embarked on building their own custom cost system from the ground up. While these systems will give the company exactly the costing system they want, it comes at a significant cost of time, money and resources.

Operational costing systems are the next generation of solutions created specifically to handle the complex costing and measurement environments encountered by food process manufactures. These package solutions that integrate with your existing ERP or Financial System allow companies to rapidly gain access to detailed cost data that that is specific to their food production process. Access to detailed product information brings a whole new level of insight on operation performance and arms the Operational Management team with information to effectively manage and implement continuous improvement projects to reduce costs.

By adding an operational costing and measurement system to the existing business systems, food manufactures can remedy many of the symptoms that produce an ailing cost process.

How Operational Costing in the Food Industry Improves Profitability

Your competitor just undercut your price, so to be competitive in the market you’re probably thinking that all you have to do is meet or beat your competitor’s price to get the deal. Let’s just reduce or eliminate the overhead contribution, and quote the price based on the materials and labour, then mark up the cost to meet the company profit margins. Right? Wrong. There are many manufacturing companies who price on the basis of what their competitors charge or the market price, without considering whether their competitors have a different cost structure or knowing their own true manufacturing costs. If you base your prices on what others are doing, you’ll never know if you’re taking in profitable business.

Instead, adopt a different approach that will bring in profitable business while remaining competitive, by implementing Emydex’s Yield and Costing Module that is a fully integrated component of the Emydex Production Management Platform, that is tightly integrated to your existing ERP or Financial System.

Emydex Yields Core

Yields & Costings Module, on Emydex Core Platform, integrated to back-office ERP

With the recipe BOM (Bill of Materials), Emydex is able to model the flow of raw materials, ingredients, packaging, resources and overhead through the food production process. By monitoring actual costs and product movement through the process, Emydex is able to generate yield variances, and measure the financial impact of production using standard reports to validate the accuracy of the costing standards.

These costs and variances can be integrated with your existing financial system to provide a more global analysis of profitability.

By knowing the true costs of producing products at your food plant, Emydex’s Yield & Costings software gives you the knowledge needed to make strategic and operational decisions that will keep your business profitable.

Terry McCorriston, Authorised Distributor, Emydex North America

Emydex Canada / North America

Terry McCorriston Consulting
28 McGibbon Crt
Kitchener, Ontario
Canada
N2A 3P2
T: + 001 519 500 0540

Terry McCorriston

LinkedIn – profile

Contact Sales

Email – sales@emydex.com

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Electronic Sheep EID / NLIS system for Sheep & Goats

VICTORIA – AUSTRALIA:

With the compulsory recording of individual sheep RFID ear tags due to commence now in Victoria (June 2017), Emydex Technology, a world leader in Traceability software systems for the food industry, is well positioned to not only meet this new requirement, but also to add real value for small stock processors.

Emydex links directly to the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) database, so data captured by the Emydex systems regarding received and processed animals, can easily be retrieved and uploaded the to the NLIS system.

By supplying a fully integrated system that links purchase appointments, deliveries, sale yard purchase data, animal welfare and quality assurance with on-floor processing data, a number of significant benefits are provided. These include data accuracy, minimal manual data input and full integration of the supply chain.

‘By integrating Emydex’s RFID data capture solution into the processing and payment chain, Wodonga Abattoir can gain full traceability and true individual carcass costing whilst complying with the new regulatory requirements. This gives us significant benefits and reduces manual data input by leveraging the inbuilt NLIS integration and sophisticated costing system that Emydex provides’. Rod Scarvell, Wodonga Abattoir.

P&L by Animal

A key feature of the Emydex system is the ability to produce a ‘P&L for every animal processed’ without having to manually key costing data or averaging costs over multiple animals.  By automatically processing the XML post sale datafiles as supplied by the saleyards, not only is the purchase data for each lot recorded and the lots for processing automatically created, the individual RFID (ear tag) numbers are stored against the supplying agent and the price paid.

This RFID data can then be matched back to the agent on an animal by animal basis, irrespective of when processing occurs or if stock is mixed prior to processing.

Additional costs can be applied by default on a saleyard or direct supply basis and can include freight, droving and, branding costs, commissions etc. so the full cost of each animal delivered to the yards can be determined.

Flexible Payments

With a user definable payment grid combined with the ability to include expected skin and other revenues the true cost of the stock to the processor is available. It is also possible to generate the slaughter floor costs (kill fee) for all purchases so stock can be costed ‘to the boning room’.

Naturally this also allows for the production of recipient created tax invoices, agent reporting, AUSMEAT feedback sheets and government levy accruals etc. which can all be emailed directly from the system to the relevant parties.

eNVD system

Emydex is also one a few ‘integrated’ systems that is certified by the MLA to integrate to the new eNVD system and thus provides the ability to receive NVD data electronically, which is fully integrated to other Emydex system modules. This provides the ability to not only store the relevant data from a legislative point of view, but also to utilise this data to drive the rest of the system by matching received livestock to the eNVD and then to the lairage, kill agenda and payments with minimal data input.

Being a fully integrated, flexible system built on modern .NET technology, with powerful on-floor data collection systems linked to a user-friendly back office system, Emydex, a system proven in over 30 livestock processing plants around the word, is able to offer the following advantages .

Emydex Sheep EID system benefits include:

  • The ability to create ‘appointments’ and lairage lots direct from the purchase advice data sent by the sale yards with no manual input (XML file)
  • The ability to match individual small stock animals back to the agent details of the appointment via the RFID to obtain the true cost of the animal (for costing).
  • The ability to add additional costs to a sale yard purchase such as agent commissions, droving, transport (up to three transport companies per purchase), feeding etc. all of which can be defaulted by sale yard provider. This then provides a true cost of stock to the plant by animal.
  • Track sale yard average costs for boxed lots if not RFID tagged.
  • Report on costs by provider (i.e. all freight or droving costs by supplier for a time period) to match to supplier invoice for reconciliation.
    The ability to record small stock EID data on the slaughter floor.
  • NLIS database interface inbuilt in the system negating the need to export/import or use any third-party applications. By having all of the current holdings etc. in the Emydex database (automatically downloaded) information can easily be match automatically to kill records.
  • An MLA certified eNVD solution integrated to the NLIS database and which provides the ability to create appointments from the eNVD data.
  • Flexible ‘three level’ payment grid with a second ‘fall through’ grid for animal that do not meet the criteria on the primary grid applied to the purchase.
  • Settlement schemes that automatically apply charges and rebates to supplier invoices associated with that scheme.
  • Record charges that apply to the invoice plus charges that are plant costs e.g. ‘processing levy’.
  • An optional facility to update any kill data from the back office after the kill.

Emydex Sheep Payments system benefits include:

  • Farmers (RCTI)
  • Hobby Farmers (no GST)
  • Advise agents of revenues for agent supplied over the hooks purchases (Buyer Advice).
  • Match sale yard agent invoices to the stock killed. Also allow for combine payments to the sale yard itself (VLE).
  • Record sheepskin sales and generate RCTIs to the purchasers.
  • Allow for the recording of all costs associated with a service kill and invoice those based on number of head processed.

Other system benefits include:

  • Email reports directly from the Emydex application without printing, scanning and emailing. Combine RCTI and feedback sheet as one email to supplier.
  • The ability to store general ledger codes per transaction type (e.g. fees, levies, purchase types etc. he facilitates the interface into accounting systems. Note interface not standard).
  • Flexible, easy to use data collection screens that can be combine or separated as required (i.e. a separate sex and dentition station or both functions on one).
  • Standalone grading stations that can run without the previous stations being available.
  • The ability to switch, at the flick of an on screen ‘switch’, between grading printers (for different ticket sizes etc. or in the case of a printer break down).
  • The ability to take an input from a panel reader and change to a wand reader should the panel reader fail (again at the flick of an on screen ‘switch’).
  • Data collection screens that can increment body numbers automatically and only be updated when necessary i.e. a breed station that only need to be updated if the breed needs to be recorded for a particular animal.
  • Inbuilt QA system with transport quality (cleanliness, bruising points etc.) and animal welfare check forms (which is able to be used in all the Emydex modules to provide a full quality management system).
  • Modern ‘.NET’ Microsoft SQL Server database environment.
  • Inbuilt report writer that allows IT Staff to generate reports in house.
  • Over 30 Emydex staff worldwide to support the application.
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