Careers Contact Downloads |

Food Processing Software Solutions

Company News

Home / Archives for Company News

Kill Line Live in Central Agri Group, Victoria, Australia

In 2016 Central Agri Group, formerly Central Meat Exports, re-opened their newly refurbished beef plant in Trafalgar as Victoria Valley Meat Exports. This is a state of the art, fully integrated, beef processing plant in Victoria, Australia. As part of the Central Agri Group of companies, VVME is focused on major export markets including the Middle East and South East Asia.

Having been in operation for several months, it was determined that the current systems did not meet the needs of this modern, export focussed business, as the various modules were not integrated and lacked the features found in a modern, integrated system. Processes such as interfacing to the NLIS database, preparing the kill agenda, generating payments and reporting were all complicated and in some cases completely manual.

In light of these requirements, VVME contacted Emydex with a view to replacing their existing system, starting with the slaughter floor and then moving on to the boning hall including stations for into-boning, offal packing and carcass dispatch, with carton dispatch to follow.

 

Kill Line Software

The kill floor went live recently with Emydex’s kill line software systems running on four on-floor data capture computers starting from an NLIS scanning station that checks the animal status in real -time against the NLIS database through to Dentition, Carcass defect and Weigh-Grading stations.

The Emydex back-office system allows for the kill agenda to be generated from bookings made earlier, many of which are themselves created by a direct import of the XML ‘purchase advice’ from the various sale-yards, with all associated costs and individual animal RFID details attached.

Data from the slaughter floor is approved, which then generates a payment invoice (recipient created tax invoice) to the supplier with very little manual manipulation using flexible payment grids. The kill data is loaded directly from Emydex to the NLIS database again streamlining the processes and adding efficiencies.

 

Electronic Quality Management System

With the slaughter floor fully live, the company is now moving ahead to implement the next phases over the next few months. The final step will be to incorporate the Emydex ‘Quality Management’ system which will integrate the Production processes with a Quality system which, being Cloud based, could potentially be expanded to include Central Agri Groups other processing facilities in other locations.

Commenting shortly after the initial Emydex system go-live at the plant, Colin Reidy, IT and QA Manager for the Central Agri Group stated:

“To be honest, that was the smoothest rollout I have ever been involved in. Even if you take the minor changes performed today, the system worked as intended with little to no intervention.

Ian’s knowledge combined with Carl’s skills made the last few improvements today practical and worthwhile.

The operators all responded positively and actively engaged with both the Emydex team and the software system.

As for the office, I walked in at 5am as normal and 5 mins later I ran out of things to do. Normally I am hard pressed to have the agenda out by 6:15 let alone get any QA checks done. Then this afternoon, after a couple hours playing with the pricing we had the final feedbacks done by 2:30pm - a task that quite easily takes me to 6pm most nights.

So to say I’m happy is an understatement.”

Request a Demo

Keeping up with demand in North America

Over the past 2 years the meat, poultry and seafood industries in North America have seen positive production increases for all protein sectors. There is a general sense of optimism about the industry as they look forward to the future. Consumer consumption rates for meat, poultry and seafood continue to increase, creating increased demand in both domestic and international markets.

These increased demands have created a culture of unrelenting focus on operational efficiencies in processing plants. Companies are looking to technology to support measurement of current processes to support continual improvements.

Processors were pushed to make the most of good economic conditions in 2018 and into 2019, sales projections are up, acquisitions are occurring more frequently, and expansion is happening in the meat, poultry and seafood industry.

As baby boomers retire and millennials move into and up the organisation, protein processors need to rethink their approach for managing and measuring the efficiency of their production lines. As the labor market continues to tighten, protein processors will need automated measurement of their line results to minimise manual labor required and to be able to provide the instant feedback across the organisation.

Emydex Software enables processors to get continual feedback from the production floor and allow some of the management positions to work remotely, through access to the Emydex tools.

Running the right shop floor solution can streamline your processing and packaging operations, expedite recalls and accurately predict yields and cost productions. The current ERP solutions lack this functionality and require a solution like Emydex to address those deficiencies. North American Meat Processors are recognising that most ERP applications support the office needs but they do not meet the unique shop floor needs of a meat processor.

Emydex Technology specialise in Factory Floor Software for Food Processors and are focusing on North America as one of three core export markets. Having secured its third customer in the North American market, this latest contract brings to 120 the number of processing plants using Emydex software worldwide, in 14 countries. The company secured its first North American contract in Canada two years ago with pork processor Donald’s Fine Foods and has since closed a deal with Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco).

Terry McCorriston, Emydex North American Business Analyst and shop floor software vendor for the meat and seafood industry, previously worked as the director of CSB-Systems, and was IT Manager at J.M. Schneiders Inc., a large meat processor in Canada. Terry has spoken at numerous international conferences on the importance of product costing in the meat industry.

Terry is certified with APICS (American Production and Inventory Control Society), to be able to provide sound recommendations on supply chain and operational processes.

Terry has a passion for helping protein industry companies improve their operations with use of technology.

For more information on the Emydex system, contact local agent Terry McCorriston 

Request a Demo

Emydex Door-to-Door in Junee Lamb, NSW, Australia

Emydex complete the system implementation with new customer in Australia, Junee Lamb, NSW

 

Junee Lamb is one of New South Wales’ leading sheep meat processors and exporters. With a focus on high quality chilled lamb for the domestic market as well as having significant export sales, Junee process over 3500 head of lambs daily. Junee also provides a service kill and boning operation for other customers such as major supermarket chains who wish to market their own product. All product is certified Halal and some product is processed as organic lamb.

Factory Floor Production Control System

Junee Lamb had a requirement to upgrade their existing factory floor production control system at the plant in Junee, as well as their Sydney wholesale and further processing systems, to a modern, flexible, user-friendly system which fully integrates all processes required for the procurement, slaughter, processing and sale of meat products.

Previously the company were operating with two separate factory floor data collection systems that were disconnected, and the company realised it would be more beneficial to their business to upgrade these systems to a single production management solution, offering one version of the truth, that could be tailored and customised to suit their specific business requirements.

Junee Lamb needed a system that would integrate with their existing back-office financial system, and also needed to incorporate an off-the-shelf label design system that allowed for the integration of foreign text in multiple languages, such as Arabic and Chinese.

Over the past 12 months, Emydex software engineers based in Australia, installed their Manufacturing Execution System (MES) across the entire business operations, including the lamb factory and wholesale centre. Emydex software modules implemented includes the Emydex Kill line & Payments module for stock procurement and payment, Carcass Management Module, Processing & Packing Module used for boning room production management, and the weigh-labelling of product, as well as the Emydex Warehouse Management module, used to manage and report on all factory stocks.

Many benefits have accrued from the implementation of Emydex, including the ability to cost stock purchased prior to processing, to determine a forward selling price. Another benefit is providing detailed costings reporting once skin returns, credits as well as all purchasing costs are known. Feedback to service kill operators and suppliers can be produced as soon as a lot is complete and emailed to customers.

For the domestic trade, the ability to quickly enter orders, and to produce consolidated production requirements and picking sheets, allows the orders to be accumulated during the day. Hanging product is weighed across an Emydex terminal, so invoices can be produced by delivery run from the terminal, as soon as loading is complete. This ensures accurate documentation is produced with invoices travelling with the deliveries. Similar functionality in the Sydney operation has allowed for significant growth with continued customer satisfaction.

Junee are a market-driven company who enjoy a reputation for top quality product and are seen as a market leader, especially into to the Asian market where the Junee Gold brand is recognised as one of the premier Australian brands. Consequently, virtually all stock is produced to order and is often labelled with customer order information (such as port marks) and often have complex, multi-language multi-label requirements.

Centralised Specification System

A key benefit of the system is having one centralised ‘specification’ system, where labels designs are stored with foreign text generated from the product specifications ‘real time’ using the actual text and thus not requiring images or conversion codes. All customer production requirements can be entered into a plan, which in turn generates the daily works orders, touch screen product buttons, all of which are linked to sales orders and labelling requirements. Order requirements eliminate costly over-production, and allow order fulfilment and shipping to be easily managed.

End to End Solution

By providing a fully integrated, ‘end to end’ solution Emydex have provided a platform where efficiencies have been gained in all areas of the business and allow for information to be readily available. Ease of use has ensured user acceptance has been high with minimal impact on the day to day running of the business as the system was rolled out. With 24-hour support in place, Junee can be assured that support is available 24x7 to provide comfort as the company goes ahead with plans to greatly expand the business over the next 12 months.

‘Having run the business across a number of disjointed systems previously, with little by way of fast-responding support, the business has greatly benefitted from have one, fully integrated, easy to use system. Testament to this is our recent and continuing smooth expansion, maintaining our reputation for top quality products and service. The Emydex system has provided significant benefits from its flexibility, ease of use and ability grow as we do. With Emydex now managing our ‘pasture to plate’ processes we feel confident we can meet the challenges as we expand into the future’.
Heath Newton, Managing Director - Junee Lamb

For enquiries contact sales@emydex.com or call Emydex on contact us

Request a Demo

Emycon 2018

To coincide with continued growth and expansion plans, Emydex held a company update day (Emycon), in Castleknock Hotel, on Friday 20th April 2018.

The purpose of this event was to update employees on the new company vision and strategy the company will be focusing on going forward and bring them up to speed on where the company is currently at and what we are hoping to achieve. The day consisted of presentations from key staff members including the CEO, Technical Director, Project Managers, Customer Support Manager, and Overseas Partners.

David McMahon, Emydex CEO, presented the companies’ mission, vision and strategy for moving forward. He also announced plans to create new jobs both in Dublin and Australia in the coming months, along with a new office based in Brisbane.

Presentations took place throughout the day covering New Product Development, Framework Updates, Project Management strategies and Market updates (Ireland &UK, Australasia, South Africa and North America/Canada.

Our overseas partners dialed in via go-to-meeting and updated colleagues on their backgrounds, current customer projects, their pipeline outlook and future direction. 

Overall the event was a huge success and one we will do again in the future.

Request a Demo

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

Emydex Traceability in Tuna Processor in Philippines

Meliomar Inc. is a tuna and seafood processing and export company based in Manila, Philippines. Meliomar focus on the development and trade of responsibly produced and high quality sustainable seafood, sourced from small-scale fisheries from areas throughout the Philippines.

Meliomar is a commercial partner of the Artsemar program for fisheries improvement run by Blueyou Consulting, based in Switzerland. By creating direct market access for seafood caught by smallholder fishers, the Artesmar initiative promotes the development of more sustainable business and fishing practices.

Meliomar traceability tagging

Blueyou leads and participates in Fishery Improvement Projects, one of which projects was to implement an Emydex electronic data capture production control system in the Meliomar operation to replace their existing manual system. They were also looking for a comprehensive real-time Traceability system to replace their manual paper-based system for traceability recording and reporting.

Door-to-door Factory Floor System

Emydex implemented their Intake, Packing & Processing, Order Management and Warehouse Management software modules to cover Meliomar’s factory floor processes, from factory door-to-door including Procurement, Reception, Manufacturing, Packing, Sales Order Picking and Dispatch. As part of the implementation Emydex also built a series interfaces to their back-office ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

As Meliomar source fish from a multitude of suppliers and fishermen, Tuna ID tags are recorded as the fish are purchased. Each ID tag has a unique number made up of a location code and a consecutive number. Data capture and quality data is recorded at intake using a fixed position weighing station. Four labels are printed for each fish at intake, one for each loin, to ensure traceability is fully maintained throughout processing, using 2D Barcodes.

Meliomar’s business processes required Emydex to be more flexible in their approach to the system design, including the requirement to pack directly to Sales Orders pulled from NAV, as opposed to packing to stock.

Another requirement was the need to perform both Intake and Dispatch in off-line mode, as well as online (via wi-fi and network), due to poor internet connection in one of their factories. Meliomar needed functionality that allowed the creation of Purchase Orders and printing pallet labels on-site, and then load the POs onto a hand-held scanner.

The scanner and labels are later brought to a separate frozen storage facility, where they label pallets, enter the number of boxes on that pallet, and scan the pallet against a PO. When they get back to the main site, the data is then synced, and the data can be viewed on the system.

Predictive Re-Ordering

A key feature of this project was predictive re-ordering, which is based on average usage of a selected frozen product based on previous usage levels. Additional functionality allows them to optionally set a multiplier for a given week, in the event that they think they will be using more than the predicted amount for any given week. They can also set lead times for each product and receive warnings indicating that they will need to make a purchase order to maintain sufficient stock, or forecast when they will be out of stock, ensuring they have full visibility over stock levels at all times.

Production and Traceability Reporting System

Meliomar now have a comprehensive Production control & Traceability reporting system operating on the factory floor from door to door. By migrating from a manual system to an electronic data capture production reporting system and implementing an Emydex traceability system, this allows Meliomar to reliably trace all tuna products direct from their origin.

Commenting on the project, Christian Schmidradner, Meliomar General Manager said “Trust in the system is fast growing and the teams see how much less work is involved in processes (before handwritten and Excel inputted numbers in the thousands in forms, tedious hand-written reports to cross check for accounting and traceability purposes) and they have started to appreciate the system. We are very happy with the new system and I want to thank the Emydex team for their dedication and intensive work on customising and implementing our system over the last year”.

David McMahon, Emydex CEO added “the Meliomar system build was an interesting project in that the project was led for the customer by the BlueYou Consulting team in Switzerland, with the end-user and factory operations based in Manila, Philippines. Full credit to the combined project management and technical delivery teams for the successful configuration and implementation of a tailored Emydex factory floor solution for Meliomar, including integration to 3rd party industrial equipment and back-office systems, without ever having to visit the Philippines”.

For enquiries contact sales@emydex.com or call Emydex on contact us

Request a Demo