Careers Contact Downloads |

Food Processing Software Solutions

Product News

Home / Archives for Uncategorized @ca / Product News

Emydex New Product Development Survey

Customer Survey Results

In March 2018, Emydex conducted a customer survey looking for feedback on New Product Development from key Emydex users within our existing customer community.

The survey queried customer interest levels in ten potential new products Emydex will potentially develop, to gauge interest in the products themselves and willingness to be part of the product design, validation and testing processes including:

  • Emydex Quality Management System (EQMS) – complete and live with customers
  • Emydex Product Specification System
  • Emydex Group-Wide Animal Payments System
  • Emydex Production Planning System – under development
  • Emydex Enterprise Master Data Management
  • Emydex Demand Planning & Forecasting System
  • Emydex Leaker Tracker System
  • Emydex Centralised Consolidated Reporting System
  • Business Intelligence & Data Analytics using MS Power BI

The survey results are highlighted below, summarising the products customers are most interested in seeing us develop in the future:

1st place

EQMS system with 97% of customers who responded either (1) very interested/willing to assist with design and testing or (2) interested, please keep me updated.

Emydex have developed a centralised QMS solution providing for all quality & compliance needs in one place, suitable for single or multi-site operations.

Joint 2nd place

Product Specification Management system and Business Intelligence with 93% of customers either very interested/willing to assist with design and testing or (2) interested, keep me updated.

Business Intelligence also had the highest single score for Very Interested/ willing to assist, with just over half of all survey respondents willing to participate in the design and testing.

Product Specification Management system – A centralised data storage solution for product specifications, such as raw materials, ingredients, packaging and finished goods, alerting internal and external partners of changes to the product spec.

Business Intelligence - Host & utilize the power of Power BI, that allows the creation of user-definable dashboards, pulling data from many sources and performing data analytics, accessing data via web based and mobile devices.

4th place

Production Planning with 90% of all customer respondents either very interested or interested, keep me updated.

Generate Production Plans based on sales demands & stock levels, using multi-tiered Bill-of-Materials. Calculate material & packaging requirements, with scheduling, capacity planning and cost calculations.

5th place

Master Data Management on 84%.

Setup & maintain all master data in one location, such as Products, Label Designs & Bill-of-Materials, with full auditing & version control and management over publishing of master data to the group’s individual plants.

Joint 6th place

Cloud Animal Payments and Centralised Reporting, with 83% either very interested or interested, keep me updated.

Cloud Animal Payments - Cloud-hosted Animal payments system for multiple production sites, with central booking system & multi-currency support.

Centralised Reporting - Bring all plant level data into one place in a consistent and consolidated state to allow group wide reporting and data archiving.

8th place

Demand Planning with 56% either very interested or interested, keep me updated.

Generate long term demand planning & forecasting for sales and material requirements, across multiple plants by looking at historical trends and strategic plans.

9th place 

Leaker Tracker System with 53% either very interested or interested, keep me updated.

A system that will give you the ability to record and report vacuum pack leakers in real time the way you want!
Capturing this data will allow you to find root causes of leaking vacuum-packed products, test and track new trail packing, save money on packaging waste and reduce claims from customers.

Apple iPad Winner

As part of the survey, we placed all customer respondents into a draw to win an Apple iPad. The winner (pictured below) was Paul Reid from Rosderra Irish Meats.

David McMahon, Emydex CEO (right) presenting Apple iPad to Paul Reid (left).

For more information on any of our products or if you would like to participate in any of the mentioned New Product Development projects please contact Shane Hayes in Emydex on:

+353 1 8855990 or email Shane on shane.hayes@emydex.com

Request a Demo

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

Request a Demo

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

Request a Demo

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.
Request a Demo

Emydex Customer Survey Results 2016

In September 2016, Emydex conducted a customer survey looking for feedback from our customers on various aspects of our business.

In total 40 customers responded, representing 84% of all Emydex customers polled.

Here are the Results:

Overall Satisfaction: The question asked was ‘Overall, how satisfied are you with Emydex?

The result was an overall average score of 5 (Satisfied) on a scale of 1-6.

In total 92% of all Emydex customers are either Very Satisfied, Satisfied or Slightly Satisfied

Recommendation: The question asked was ‘How likely are you to recommend Emydex to a work colleague?’

The result was an overall average score of 8 on a scale of 1-10

Commenting on the two ‘overall’ customer satisfaction results, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “Obviously Emydex are delighted with these results. When we ran our first customer survey in early 2013, we had 15 customers operating 45 sites at the time, and the customer feedback was equally as good back then. Today we have over 40 customers operating close to 100 sites, and we were eager to learn whether we could sustain this high level of satisfaction amongst our existing customer base, as we grew larger as a company, particularly into new overseas markets where you don’t get as many opportunities to meet your customers face to face very often, if even at all?”

McMahon continued “Ireland is a small country, everyone knows everyone, so you really need focus on delivering on your promises to your customers. Your existing customers will tell others about their positive experiences if they are satisfied, but equally, dissatisfied customers are more likely to tell 10 times as many people about their experiences if they are not!”

Quality of System: The question asked was ‘How satisfied are you with the Quality, Speed & Performance of the Emydex solution configured for you?’

The result was an overall average score of 5 (Satisfied) on a scale of 1-6

A number of other questions asked in the survey, polled our customer base on factors such as Project Management, Managing Expectations and our Customer Helpdesk to which the average scores were all 4 (Slightly Satisfied) on a scale of 1-6, so we know there are areas for improvement in both our Project Management and Customer Helpdesk departments.

Valerie Coleman was recently promoted from our Customer Helpdesk team to a Project Management role. Valerie has very quickly risen to the task as a Project Manager, with very positive feedback from customers in projects she is managing. In addition, we are working on a number of new initiatives with our customer helpdesk team in order to try to speed up time to resolution of ‘non-critical’ helpdesk tickets. These initives include an incentive scheme for ‘first touch’ issue ticket resolution, and more use of the phone to help diagnose the root-cause issues for tickets sooner, than relying on email for diagnosis.

The final Question asked was in relation to the Lead Programmers abilities and skills working on each customer project. Same with all previous customer surveys conducted the average score was the highest of all questions polled, with the average score being 5.28 out of 6 for all 40 customers polled. Specific feedback from customers included “Technical ability is excellent”, “Our programmer is Tops, I could write forever in praise of him, please do not take him away from us”, “our programmer has 100% commitment and is easy to work with”, “our developer is very helpful and appears to be an excellent programmer”, “our programmer was so excellent because he managed to get his work completed well before the time given, and he was always communicating proactively with us”.

Request a Demo

Introducing the Benefits of Emydex Version 4.0

The Emydex Product Development and Customer Delivery teams have been busy over the past months, delivering a major upgrade of the underlying Emydex platform and Modules, the first in three years (release Version 4.0), as well as designing and building many new customer-driven features and functionality.

Main Upgrade Changes:

2.1 .Net 4.0

As part of the version 4 upgrade Emydex have moved from .Net 3.5 to .Net 4.0. We choose to target .Net 4.0 rather than .Net 4.5, as the latter version will not run Windows XP nor any previous operating systems. Customers running Windows 7 or later will automatically have .Net 4.0 installed but for any terminals running any Operating system earlier than Windows 7 they will need to install .Net 4.0 separately in order to run Version 4 of Emydex. A full list of .Net 4 changes can be found here.

2.2 Dev Express V13.2

Emydex Version 4 uses DevExpress V13.2 (latest at the time development started) which gives the UI a much more modern look and feel, along with a host of other features and benefits.

  • WinForms Spreadsheet Control
  • WinForms PDF Viewer Control
  • New WinForms Map Control
  • New Touch-Optimized Controls
  • Flyout Panel
  • WinForms Chart Control with Data Aggregation & Sparkline
  • WinForms Document Manager
  • New Live Tile Manager Component
  • New WinForms Editors
  • New Control Designer UI

What’s New in DevExpress 13.2 are here

2.3 Multiple Processors

Version 4 has the ability to have more than one DMS Server processing data on the same production system.

Benefits – data processor load balancing, allowing prioritisation of which messages get processed first and the speed they get processed in. This is potentially of huge benefit to larger Production sites with high throughput of DMS server transactions

2.4 Transient Fault Handling

Emydex now utilises smart retry/back-off logic to mitigate the effect of transient failures in both our on-Premise and cloud-based Emydex systems. This is applicable for time-outs, heavy loads, temporary loss of connectivity or times of heavy performance demands. Instead of throwing an exception and displaying a not available or error page to our customers, Emydex will assume the error is transient, and automatically retry the operation that resulted in the error. In the vast majority of cases the operation will succeed on the second try, and the system will recover from the error without the customers ever having been aware that there was a problem in the first place.

2.5 Cloud Hosting & Cloud Deliverable

  • Delivery of Emydex installs and upgrades via the cloud
  • No need for a file server or plugins folder share anymore
  • No dependency on IIS for SDA application anymore
  • No dependency on link server anymore
  • New licencing model with automatic activation
  • App connection setup is greatly simplified – no need to know server name, database, login username & password etc.. These are all configured centrally.
  • Addition of new Quick set-up i.e., ‘copy workstation’ functionality, meaning new terminal installs are quicker and simplified
  • DMS Clients are more ‘network aware’, meaning if the connectivity to backend server is lost, Version 4.0 prevents data from being lost e.g., in the middle of editing a product file. The client will enter standby-mode until connectivity is restored
  • Enables easy App updates as they are more controlled and could be done on a regular bases.
  • Also supports full cloud-hosted databases on a pay-as-you-use basis, removing the need for the procurement, installation and maintenance of local file servers, local server licences as well as database licences, lowering total cost of ownership
  • Cloud-based development and testing environments are standard for new Emydex installations, facilitating customer input and feedback much earlier in product development lifecycle. Test environments are commissioned upfront on day 1. This means that a customer doesn’t need to source and commission these environments which can be very costly and take time.

2.6 Standardisation & Best Practice

Emydex have put a lot of “good practice” into place by applying coding standards and using sets of tools to aid and enforce these best practice coding standards.

  • Migration of coding from VB.Net to C# – in line with industry best practice. C# for example forces better coding practices ensuring more optimally performing code
  • The adaptation of new coding patterns such as Dependency Injection and event aggregator allow us build solutions more efficient and easier to extend.
  • We implemented a dictionary of terms ensuring that all developers are using the same definitions for the industrial terms used.
  • Standard PLU File layout – this is mainly for new customers as existing customers have their own PLU systems and file structures bedded in. That said though, existing customers will also benefit from further development in this area.
  • Standard systems such as the new ‘Food System’, contains a full suite of “Door to door” functionality, allowing user to run full process out-of-the-box
  • Database – reviewed and cleaned, corrected and standardised naming conventions, removing unused objects, optimized indexes
  • Database – made compatible with Microsoft Azure SQL – meaning easy and quicker migration from one platform to the other e.g., from Test Lab to Live

2.7 Security

  • In version 4.0 Emydex have defined how a standard security configuration should work on a SQL database in order to support our application, this allows customers have control over who has what type of access (view, edit) to which data sets? (Removed the “sa” logins)
  • Standardisation of Application Role Type e.g., MDA admin security rights, DMS Client supervisor security rights etc

2.8 Data Grids

Emydex system now supports Intelligent data grid refresh only when data changes – minimising data load and bandwidth (previously refreshed continuously, regardless of activity)

2.9 Web Services APIs

  • Web services APIs (RESTful) are now available within the Emydex Apps for operational tasks and integration to 3rd party systems (import/export)
  • These are extendable to meet customer requirements
  • Meaning any 3rd party can integrate with the various Emydex Applications e.g., stop and start DMS server from an iPhone (different platform)

2.10 Label Designs

  • Labels design layouts are now stored in the database rather than on the server, meaning labels are faster to load, easier to manage and sync across systems.
  • No dependency on file shares and supports master version control e.g., central (master) to local site to factory floor terminal
  • Standardisation of label design in order to enhance print speed and performance
  • Allows multi-lingual data on labels
  • Label Printing Service to control printing is performed on a background thread
  • Using Nice Labels within the application:
    • Uses logging to analyse why things are not functioning as they should be, if there is an issue
    • Changed the Nice Label Printing Engine to check length of ‘passed in’ variable against the length set in the label design, clip & warn if too big
    • This is mainly for text fields e.g., if the systems passes a bigger size text than is set on the label, Nice Labels will just ignore it and print the previous set value – which leads to wrong data being printed on the label. This change will truncate (n-2) and add “..” to the end of text if too big.
    • Added base Data processing classes to handle “Label Reprinted” & “Label Cancelled” messages. Logs to DMS Transaction for auditing purposes
  • Added Label Preview and Data Processing to record any printing of this label preview.
  • Note: A variable has been added to the label to mark it as QC preview and if printed – i.e. should only be used for QC, not put on cases etc.

2.11 Nice Labels 6.0

Emydex now supports both Nice Labels 6.0 whilst also remaining backwards compatible with Nice Labels 5.0. The main features & benefits of Nice Labels version 6.0 over previous versions are detailed here

2.12 SDA (Scanning Terminal Application)

  • The SDA Application has been updated to use a modern UI
  • All SDA forms rewritten in C# and standardised
  • Breaking of dependency on IIS, meaning much quicker and easier installations of SDA and no need for a customer to have a server running IIS, saving cost.
  • SDA is now database independent – can use SQL CE or SQLite. SQLite being the preferred choice as it has more features such as views, stored procedures, functions and is also consistent with SQLite database utilised on MDA
  • Cloud connector (cloud DB support) – allows connectivity to any database via a web service
  • Emydex On-Demand support for SDA to deliver App updates and add-ons via the cloud
  • Simplified Stock Reconciliation allowing start and complete Stock Rec and Stock Counts for reporting solely from an SDA scanner
  • SDA independent of Scanner screen resolution, screens will automatically resize to fit any Windows CE devices. Previously screen size was fixed to the PDA standard screen size
  • Ability to print labels from SDA via Web Service rather than using direct approach, meaning:
    • (1) no need for Nice Labels licences on scanner
    • (2) full and extensive use of all functions within Nice labels
    • (3) removal of all dependencies e.g., connecting scanners to printers

2.13 MDA (PC Terminal Application)

The Emydex PCA application (Emydex’s Factory Floor PC terminal found in Version 3.3.5 and earlier) will continue to be supported by Emydex, but the newer (leaner) MDA Application for Factory floor PC terminals and tough-books has been enhanced and extended in Version 4. Compared against the PCA application, the MDA application is more lightweight, leaner, has a better UI design as well as enhanced performance.

  • There is a sharper UI and design for touch and operation on tablet devices.
  • It takes advantage of new technology and developments, i.e. APIs and full cloud support.
  • Simplified the switching of users on the MDA (factory floor) using PIN numbers rather than passwords and allows for quicker switching and locking – for jumping between various role types quickly e.g., from operator to supervisor and back again (to change dates)
  • Support basic speech commands
  • From the MDA you can add removed & reordered forms
  • Can easily download forms & data from the DMS and rebuild its database
  • Added Label Review, Reprint & Cancel to Transaction history

2.14 Other new Version 4 features in brief:

  • Data Aggregation – surfacing of real-time IT Performance data, Daily Production data or QC data at periodic intervals, per site, across group sites via web-based reporting
  • Stock Maps – highlighting via warehouse maps, which product stocks are stored in which warehouse locations. Stock map search filters can also be used to highlight the whereabouts of products containing one or many specified Allergens
  • Packaging & Back flushing
  • Inventory Re-order advisory reporting
  • Quality Forms – giving Emydex customers the ability to build and run their own QC survey forms for running on fixed or mobile (MDA) devices such as tough books or windows tablets

Request a Demo