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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

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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.

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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

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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

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HJ Nolan Salmon Filleting Yield Control System

HJ Nolan Ltd have been in business for 95 years, since 1912. The company sells premium seafood products worldwide, mainly smoked salmon, under the well-known ‘Nolans Seafoods’ brand. Today the company employs almost 300 people across its two Seafood processing facilities in Dublin, Ireland and Aberdeen in Scotland.

HJ Nolan approached Emydex Technology and SF Engineering in 2014, with a request to commission a new salmon filleting and trimming line from SF Engineering, integrated to an in-line real-time Yield and Efficiency reporting software system from Emydex Technology.

Sean Carolan, IT Manager with HJ Nolan’s in Dublin explains the background to the project, “before the Emydex and SF Engineering solution was implemented, all our salmon filleting was done manually. This resulted in us being unable to calculate our yields until the end of the working day, and this calculation was done with pen and paper. This process was time consuming and often lead to inaccuracies and mistakes. As our production started to ramp-up, we found it increasingly difficult to manage this process, and it became necessary to find a way to automate this process.”

Automated Yield Reporting

SF Engineering and Emydex set to work with Nolans to design and build the end-solution required. This exercise resulted in a SF Engineering salmon filleting & trimming conveyor line, complete with an In-feed holding bin, de-heading station, weigh hopper and a distribution conveyor that feeds the salmon to six salmon filleting operators working on the line. Each individual operator station consists of a buffer hopper, a holding hopper, a trimming table, an offal chute and a reset button.

SF Engineering Salmon Filleting and Trimming SystemSF Engineering Salmon Filleting and Trimming System

To operate the system, each salmon-filleter working on the conveyor line first presses their reset button. This triggers the holding hopper to retract, and a new salmon falls into the hopper from the buffer hopper. The filleter then removes the fish to complete their trimming tasks, and once completed, places the fillet back onto the magenta weighing conveyor. The conveyor records the weight of the fish, and then waits for a free space on the takeaway conveyor. Once free, the conveyor sends the fish off to the pin-bone machine. When the operator’s holding-bin is emptied, the operator presses the reset button, starting the whole process all over again.

Cloud-Hosted or On-Premise

During each operation cycle, Emydex’s Data Capture System (DCS), captures each individual filler’s production data, and calculates the batch yield in real-time. Sean Carolan explains “the Emydex software system allows us to capture accurate yield data; weight-on versus weight-off, as well as production throughput; time-on versus time-off, from each individual filleter in real-time. This information is stored in a central cloud-hosted Emydex database, that can be viewed by both operators on the line, as well as our production supervisors on an industrial monitor running Emydex in the factory.

Real-Time KPI Reporting

Displaying production data and KPIs as they are happening in real-time, tends to have a motivational effect on the filleters working on the line, and improves operator productivity. Emydex production reporting can also be accessed on client PCs in the back-office, as well as anywhere around the world via a smart-phone, given the system is hosted in the cloud”.

On-floor Production reporting monitor displays individual filleter yields and throughputs accurately in real-timeOn-floor Production reporting monitor displays individual filleter yields and throughputs accurately in real-time

Carolan Continues “The ability to export accurate information instantly from the Emydex system, has greatly improved the process by which the filleters are paid. Before the implementation of the Emydex system, the production supervisor would have had to manually calculate each filleters weights and rate of pay. This information can now be exported and sent directly to our accounts department. The individual yield of each filleter can now be much more closely monitored by their supervisor. This allows us to insure each filleter is maintaining a satisfactory yield throughout the day.”

Traceability Reporting

“In addition to Yield and efficiency reporting, Emydex is also recording and reporting on food chain traceability throughout the production process” outlines David McMahon, Emydex CEO. “traceability details recorded for each batch include the Emydex ITN (Internal Traceability number), Production run, Supplier, Harvest Number, Harvest Date, Product, Species and size. Same as for production reporting, traceability reporting is available instantly and accurately, from any device connected to the central database in the cloud. Optionally, the system can be hosting on-site/on-premises if required”.

Customer Support

Sean Carolan concludes “Emydex offered unwavering support to Nolans from the onset of this project. Throughout the initial design process, the implementation and the aftersales support, Emydex has maintained an unparalleled level of support and professionalism. It’s always a pleasure dealing with anyone from the Emydex team, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone in the market for reliable, well-supported factory floor software solution.”

 

About Emydex Technology: Emydex Technology is a leading supplier of Traceability reporting and Production Management Software systems to Meat, Fish and Food Processors around the world. Over 100 food processing factories, operating across 4 continents, use Emydex factory floor software systems to monitor, control and report on their Production yields, stocks, traceability, food quality, safety and compliance.

About SF Engineering: SF Engineering is an award-winning Irish engineering company that designs and manufacturers food processing and packaging solutions for the food industry globally. The company’s Engineering solutions are operating in meat, fish and food processing companies throughout Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Chile

About Emydex & SF Engineering: Emydex Technology and SF Engineering have worked on a number of joint software/hardware integration projects for shared customers over the past number of years. In addition to the salmon filleting line solution delivered to HJ Nolans, other joint projects including Emydex integration to an SF Engineering pork primal grading line, as well as integration to RFID controlled SF Engineering conveyor systems operating in a lamb Processing plant in the UK.

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

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Traceability enabled in Ireland’s Largest Pig Processor

Rosderra Irish Meats Group is the largest pork processing company in Ireland. The group processes over 1.5 million pigs per annum across its two state-of-the-art processing facilities at Edenderry, Co. Offaly, and Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. In addition, Rosderra has a speciality Meat Ingredients facility in Clara, Co. Offaly, a Pork-Curing facility in Jamestown, Co. Leitrim, and a Cooked Meats facility in Stradone, Co. Cavan.

Rosderra approached Emydex in 2014 to replace their existing traceability and production control systems operating across the group approaching end-of-life. After winning a competitive tender, Emydex was awarded the contract to supply a new factory floor data capture IT solution that operates door-to-door across the group’s four main operating plants. All production processes were to be covered, including weighbridge integration, lairage, grading, primal deboning, further processing, packing, order picking and dispatch, stock, yield management and traceability reporting.

Split into eight distinct project phases, the project also included implementing Emydex’s Cold Store system into Rosderra’s Cold Store facility in Jamestown and tight integration with third-party warehouse management systems operating in external cold stores utilised by Rosderra’s production plants.

As part of the initial project phases, Emydex worked with Rosderra’s IT integration partner to build robust interfaces to the group’s SAP system. Integration points were built using AS2 and XML transfer files to allow Emydex to pull products, materials, and customer files from SAP, as well as Customer Sales orders destined for both Rosderra production sites and third-party cold stores, and later send updated Stock data back to SAP for stock valuation and available-to-promise purposes.

After completing the roll-out of Emydex’s Packing and Warehouse Management systems to Rosderra’s four operating plants in early 2016, the focus shifted to the Boning Hall operations in Edenderry and Roscrea. These project phases included implementing Emydex’s boning hall systems for cutting, boning, further processing, and Yield Control. Yield Reporting from Emydex includes Carcass chill loss, Cutting yield, chill loss/cutting summary and Boning Hall yield reports.

Presently, the project is in its final phase, which covers the Abattoir operations at both Edenderry and Roscrea, including a centralised slaughter plan and livestock appointments system, weigh-bridge integration, lairage bookings, bulk sequencing, and detained and pig grading stations. Reporting will include a real-time slaughter line monitor program that will accurately display the status of the slaughter with analysis by lot. Slaughter line analysis can be displayed in both tabular and graphical reporting formats.

Commenting on the project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO, said, “We are now well into the final stages of a two-year Emydex systems roll-out across the Rosderra group, covering door-to-door processes as well as integrations to back-office ERP, 3rd party cold stores and suppliers as well as factory floor machinery. Looking back over the two years, I see the project has run smoothly. Both the Emydex and Rosderra project teams worked well together to plan and deliver each project phase on schedule without any major disruption to operations. Rosderra is now reaping the benefits of having a robust factory floor data capture Production control system installed, with Emydex providing group and plant managers and supervisors with real-time and accurate reporting on their Production Yields, Stocks and Traceability.”

Louis Ennis, Rosderra Group Finance and Emydex project sponsor added, “Rosderra Irish Meats Group chose Emydex as an end-to-end solution to replace our legacy system. The installation, which is currently ongoing, will be completed over multiple phases across multiple sites, with all implementations running smoothly and with minimum disruption to the business. The first implementation was the warehouse and packing modules, and, through added interfaces with our ERP system, brought immediate benefit to the business through greater visibility on orders, improved data validation and reduced administration, especially around our cold store loads where manual input has been greatly reduced. Overall, the system greatly improved real-time information and offered ease of use and improved flexibility when making changes”

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