Company Updates

IT Solutions in the Food Industry Event on 28th May

1st May 2013

IT Solutions for the food industry

Recent events concerning horse meat found in the food supply chain have renewed focus once again on the need for integrated Financial, Traceability and Quality Systems to manage the complex food processing supply chain.

The Microsoft Food Industry event on 28th May will feature presentations and integrated demonstrations from 3 leading Irish software vendors, each with their own specialist area of expertise and software systems to help Food Producers manage different aspects of their businesses.

This seminar will be an opportunity to learn how joined up IT systems specially tailored for the Food processing Industries can deliver a "total plant" IT solution enabling:

Financial Management & Control
Stock Control & Stock Management
Production & Traceability Reporting
Yield, Costs and Give-away Reporting
Factory, line and Operator performance Reporting
Quality & Food Safety Management

For Plant Managers & IT Managers

Emydex technology, Simply Dynamics and Safefood 360 provide a fully integrated solution covering Production, Finance and Quality management systems

For Production & IT Managers

Emydex Technology are the leading supplier of Production Management Software Systems to food Processors in Ireland, and count companies such as Dawn Meats, Dunbia Group, Kepak, Liffey Meats, Oliver Carty, Moy Park and Rockabill Fish as customers.

Developed using Microsoft technologies, Emydex's factory floor data capture and Traceability reporting systems are operating in over 40 food processing plants spread over Ireland the UK and France, for some of the largest Food processing companies in Industries such as Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry and Fish.

The system is highly customisable and configurable such that it can be tailored to match the specific business requirements of any food processor.

For Finance & IT Managers

Simply Dynamics is a leading provider of ERP business management software. Amongst our customers we are proud to count Liffey Meats, Oliver Carty, Horgans Delicatessen Supplies, Devenish Nutrition and Flahavans. A Microsoft Gold ERP Partner, we have a single product focus: supplying, modifying, and supporting Microsoft Dynamics Nav. We also develop an extensive range of customised Dynamics Nav software add-ons.

At Simply Dynamics, we are committed to providing the highest quality customer service, working closely with our customers to ensure the success of their ERP systems. We are headquartered in Dublin and have a team of dedicated ERP specialists with multi-disciplinary business backgrounds, and over 100 man years of ERP industry knowledge.

For Quality & Technical Managers

Safefood 360 is a young, innovative technology company dedicated to developing and supplying the global food industry with food safety compliance software solutions that work. Our team is made up of practitioners from both the Food and IT industries who know the needs of our end users because we worked in these roles.

This experience and insight is built into our solutions from day-one making them powerful, intuitive and a pleasure to use. Our solutions allow food processing plants set-up, plan, record and reports on all aspects of food safety management including HACCP, PRP's, management, documents and monitoring.

It is perfect for companies seeking or maintaining certification to GFSI standards, FSMA, retailer and legal compliance.

Emydex at MeatUp UK 2013

24th March 2013

Emydex will be exhibiting at the forthcoming MeatUp 2013 exhibition taking place at the NEC Birmingham on 2nd and 3rd of July 2013.

Emydex are sharing a stand (313) with a UK hardware partner MWS Ltd of Leicester.

The exhibition will showcase the Emydex Recipe weighing module running on a RADWAG PUE5.15. PC terminal / weight indicator for whom MWS are UK agents. The recipe module will be configured for burger production.

Also on the stand will be Emydex’s latest OCM packing station software. Again running on a RADWAG PUE5.15.

Demonstrations and presentions will be available on other Emydex Meat Industry software modules.

MWS will be showing a selection of their high quality stainless steel weighing equipment, equipment stands and printer cabinets.

New Senior Industry Hires

8th March 2013

Danny O’Hanlon is a recent new joiner to the Emydex Implementation team managed by Technical Manager, Daniel Simonavicius. Danny holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the National University of Ireland, as well as a Masters in Engineering, Computer Science & Communications from the University of Limerick.

Prior to joining Emydex, Danny worked for 6 years as the sole IT person in McCarrens, a leading Irish Pork primal processing plant that employs over 200 people. Danny’s role covered management of all IT systems in addition to designing and developing software systems needed for various operational requirements including Purchasing, Goods-In and Production systems such as:

Weighbridge in-take/Lairage system
Kill Line grading system
Cut-up system recording all primal weights
Real-time yield system
Packaging Stock Control scanning system
Traceability system
Label production to customer requirements

Prior to working in McCarrens, Danny worked as an IT Consultant with the Irish Companies Registration Office (CRO), and as a Software Engineer in Trintech Technologies. He has over 12 years work experience.

“Danny is the type of person we are always on the lookout for in Emydex to further expand our existing team of highly experienced programmers, all whom have an in-depth knowledge of the workings of the food processing industries. There is a steep learning curve, and a lot of Industry specific knowledge required to be able to competently design and deliver tailored software solutions to our customers. Anyone with this level of relevant experience and training is always a very welcome addition to the team”, said David McMahon, Emydex CEO.

Updated August 2013

Emma Flynn

Emma Flynn joined Emydex in March 2013 in the role of Office Manager. Emma has a Bachelor of Business Studies from Dublin City University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Events Management from the Fitzwilliam Institute. Prior to joining Emydex, Emma worked as Alumni Relations Officer in DCU for almost 7 years, where she was responsible for managing the Alumni Relations Programme and worked at a senior administrative level. As part of her role in managing Emydex’s offices, Emma is also involved in assisting the Support Team on a daily basis, and supported the company CEO on Sales & Marketing as well as HR activities.

Patricia Ramos

Patricia Ramos joined Emydex in August 2013 as an Application Support Developer working on the Emydex customer support team. Patricia holds a Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Burgos, and a number of Training Certifications including SQL. and .Net Framework. Prior to joining Emydex, Patricia worked for 6 years as an analyst software developer in the banking sector in Spain.

Emydex opens New Product Development office

1st March 2013

In line with continued growth and customer successes, Emydex this month (March 2013) opened a second office in Northwest Business Park that will focus purely on New Product Development (NPD).

The NPD team, led by Emydex co-founder and CTO, James Grennan and an initial team of three dedicated software engineers have moved to Unit 13, three doors down from Emydex’s main head office in Unit 10.
The existing offices in Unit 10 will now focus entirely on Emydex Customer Implementation projects, led by Daniel Simonavicius, as well as Customer Support, managed by Emydex’s Customer Service Manager, Lorna Daly. Daniel’s team of ten experienced programmers are responsible for the design and implementation of tailored systems for Emydex customers. Once customer systems are live and bedded-in, they are handed over to Lorna’s team of four dedicated programmers to support customer projects in-life.

James and his R&D team have an ambitious twelve month product development roadmap ahead of them to develop such systems as:

Emydex Standardised Systems (ESS): geared toward rollout of Emydex systems to smaller and medium sized food processors, systems that can also be customised and tailored by Emydex Value-added resellers and partners in overseas markets

Emydex On-Demand (EOD): a cloud-based iteration of the Emydex Production Management system whereby the central production server, usually hosted onsite in a customer’s factory is hosted in the cloud on a Microsoft Azure platform. Emydex software will still be loaded onto factory floor hardware devices such as PC terminals, handheld scanners and rugged Toughbook’s as normal. It will just mean all factory floor data captured will be securely stored in a centralised cloud-based production server, accessible from anywhere in the world.

Speaking on the recent move James Grennan commented “the R&D team now has the space and freedom to put some structure around the chaos that can be involved in brainstorming new ideas and designing new products and services. We have space to map our ideas, plans and designs that we didn’t have in Unit 10. Unit 13 gives us the mind-space to really focus on our product development plans in a big way”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO added “The move to Unit 13 frees up space in Unit 10 to extend both the Customer Implementation and Support teams. Unit 13 has enough square-footage to accommodate up to 20 additional people. This gives us some breathing space and room for further growth. Our business plans are to grow to around 40 people by the end of 2014.”

Seven new hires join the Emydex Team

7th January 2013

In line with continued success in winning new business and company growth, Emydex is pleased to announce seven new hires to the team in various roles across the business.

Joining Lorna and Fran on the application support team are John Dennedy and Rolandas Sloveckas. John worked previously as a technical consultant with Synopsis in Dublin, before starting up his own company in 2007 supporting cross-platform IT solutions for both public and private sector customers like Friends First, Pfizer and SR Technics. John has a technology degree from Open-University and is a master certified network engineer.

Rolandas Sloveckas is the 4th Lithuanian to join the Emydex programming team, arriving to Ireland with 7 years programming experience. Rolandas holds a Bachelor’s degree in Informatics from the Gedimias Technical University in Vilnius.

Eimear O’Mahony joins Emydex as our new Office Manager. Prior to joining Emydex, Eimear worked for 3 years with DEM Machines supporting both their Sales and Service teams. Before that, Eimear worked in Eircom where she was a corporate account manager in Eircom’s retail business. In her capacity as Office Manager with Emydex, Eimear will support Lorna and the application support team in dealing with customer support enquiries and requests.

Having spent the past year working as a .Net developer with Keelings in Dublin, we are delighted that Andrius (Andrew) Urbelis re-joins Emydex as a senior programmer on the Customer Implementation Team. Andrew worked for 3 years as a .Net developer in Emydex prior to Keelings, and he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Informatics from the Kaunas University of Technology.

Stephen Keating also joins the Emydex programming team as a Senior Developer working on our Customer implementation team where he will work on projects to customise and configure Emydex software for food processing customers. Stephen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Trinity College Dublin as well as a Post Grad in Applied Science (Software Engineering) from University College Cork. Prior to joining Emydex, Stephen worked as a senior programmer with SoftCo Ltd for 4 years and as a Software Designer with Hewlett Packard in Leixlip for 11 years.

Just before Christmas 2012, two further additions to the Emydex programming team were Sean Gallager andEamonn Carolan, both recent graduates from the Dublin Business School.

Emydex Customer Satisfaction – Nov 2012

14th December 2012

With the overall aim of trying to constantly improve the quality of our software solutions, as well as customer service delivered to our clients, Emydex send a short Customer Satisfaction Survey to all our customers every six months.

The survey measures the satisfaction levels in the following areas:

Quality of Solution (speed, performance, usability, overall product/solution performance)
Execution Timeliness (how did we do against agreed project timelines?)
Meeting Expectations (how did we measure up at the end versus expectations at the start?)
Proactive Support (how did our customer support team fair?)
Lead Programmer (how happy are you with your lead programmer?)
Recommendation (how likely are you to recommend Emydex to a work colleague or friend?)

At least two representatives from each of our customers are invited to respond in order to get a broad picture of satisfaction levels across our entire customer base. In any case we strive to ensure at least one person responds on behalf of each customer.

Results from our most recent survey conducted in November 2012 show an increase in the level of Quality of Solution & Support e.g. the quality of the solution we give to our customers in terms of Usability, Speed and Performance. This metric rose from 79% to 82% when compared year on year.

A very positive result for Emydex staff and customers alike is that Overall Satisfaction levels continue to increase, a rise over the past year of 2.72% compared to last year’s figures to 80%. Also in relation to Overall Satisfaction levels, it’s worth noting that 95% of our respondents are either satisfied or very satisfied.

We are also delighted to say that, once again, in relation to the question regarding Recommendation the result has increased by 9.71% compared to the same period last year to 84%.

Another highlight from the November survey is that overall satisfaction in their Lead programmer rose nearly 5% from 82.5% in April 2012 to 86% in November 2012, the largest score recorded against any metric measured to date. An endorsement of Emydex’s policy that is to recruit, train and retain highly skilled programmers that also have many years relevant experience of working in the Food Processing Industries.