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Emydex Live in World’s Largest Ostrich Processor

OUDTSHOORN – SOUTH AFRICA:

World’s Largest Ostrich Processor

Established in 1985, Klein Karoo is the world’s largest Ostrich processor, producing 65% of all Ostrich related products found on international markets. Klein Karoo represents more than 800 local farmer members, and produces ostrich meat, leather and feathers. Klein Karoo supplies Ostrich (Poultry) meat, including the famous ‘fan fillet’ to the local South African market, as well as to a growing number of export markets including the UK, Denmark and Sweden where Klein Karoo’s pre-grilled Ostrich meat is today available in five of the largest retailers in Europe.

With its head-quarters in the town of Oudtshoorn, located on the garden route in South Africa, the company operates a large number of processing factories in the region including three separate Ostrich Slaughter and deboning plants located in Oudtshoorn, Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam, as well as a number of other processing facilities including value-added processing, pet treat, pre-grill and Biltong processing operations.

Working in conjunction with a South African Industrial Engineering Company (iPlan Global), Klein Karoo invited Emydex to tender in July 2015, for a factory floor software solution to replace their existing production control systems that were deemed to be end-of-life. Klein Karoo sought to adopt a “leapfrog” strategy in the selection of their new software system i.e., a technological solution appropriate for 2016 and beyond. They also requested a centralised enterprise system in order to maintain one “single version of the truth”. Finally, the system they sought needed to be agile and flexible so as to allow for scale and speed to incorporate business change such as acquisitions.

Kill Line Software Live in Three Plants

Following a thorough tender process, including a project discovery and scoping exercise in South Africa, Emydex were awarded the Klein Karoo contract in January 2016. A team of Emydex developers working remotely from Dublin in close collaboration with Klein Karoo in South Africa, commissioned and configured Emydex software systems for Klein Karoo’s three Abattoir operations, boning halls and value added operations for both Local and Export Markets. A team of Emydex Senior software engineers implemented Emydex systems into the groups three plants over the Summer months of 2016, such that by the end of August all Emydex systems were live and in operation across all processing plants, without any major issues. In tandem, Emydex integrated with Klein Karoo’s new back-office ERP system, Syspro, that was implemented in parallel by iPlan Global.

Commenting on the system go-lives Karoo’s project manager said “The operators at both Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam had a positive experience with Emydex following go-live, and the general consensus is that Emydex seems much simpler and faster to use than their current system. Also taking into account the fact that the users at Swellendam saw the screens for the first time on the morning of go-live, and had no major issues transacting. So overall a positive experience from an end-user’s perspective. The Emydex developers were very helpful during their visit and didn’t shy away from finding on-site solutions or the long hours.”

Full Traceability Reporting

Commenting on the perceived benefits for the business following the system go-live, Cobus Pretorius, Production & logistics Co-Ordinator with Klein Karoo said “The Emydex program interface is really user friendly, and makes navigating through the system very easy, and also the filtering option on all Emydex client screens, make lookups quick and easy. The suite of full traceability reports are easy to navigate, and will save us a lot of time. In addition, the fact that all information and reporting can be extracted to Excel also has a lot of benefits for our business.” Commented Pretorius

He went on to add “from a Warehousing perspective the full scanning throughout the Emydex system is a big step forward for our company, we can already see the huge benefits this gives us in terms of proper stock control. Also by fully integrating with our new financial system, Emydex has eliminated all the work that we had to manually duplicate before. Naturally the human error with regards to these manual duplicated transactions has also been removed.

The automatic integration between our Graaff Reinet & Swellendam plants in terms of carcass shipments to our primary processing facility in Oudtshoorn has also saved us a lot of time and trouble. Lastly, the way labels are set up, and the ability we have to change them with little or no input from Emydex, as well as the fact that we can preview the labels before we have to actually print, is something that I rate as one of my top three system improvements!”

Recipe Formulation Software

“Finally, the Emydex Recipe system, which is something new to Klein Karoo, works really well and we can see that it actually gives the factory workers a sense of pride in actually “measuring” what they are doing and not just blindly mixing bathes. This also ensures that the correct products are used in the correct quantities for all the recipes. The last benefit I would add is that having the ability to be able to trouble-shoot quickly by being able to connect to the actual floor pc’s have made life much easier!” added Cobus Pretorius.

Reflecting on the project’s success, Charl du Plessis, Managing Director of Klein Karoo International said “to incorporate Emydex slaughter, de-boning and recipe functionality into a single business entity in such a short time-frame was great achievement in my opinion”. David McMahon, Emydex CEO added “the Klein Karoo project was definitely one of the most ambitious and potentially challenging projects we have ever had to tackle. The fact that the go-lives went so smoothly, over the various project phases coming in quick succession over the Summer, is down to the hard work and many months of preparation and testing invested by Klein Karoo, iPlan and Emydex working in partnership as a unified team”.

For more information on our Poultry Processing Software click here

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Beef Processing Software Live in MeatCo Namibia

WINDHOEK – NAMIBIA:

The Emydex implementation team returned to Ireland after the latest phase of Emydex system deployments at MeatCo’s two main production sites located in Windhoek and Okahandja, Namibia. At this stage Emydex’s factory floor data capture and production reporting software is now operational from factory door-to-door in both of MeatCo’s main beef primal processing plants, from Kill line through to boning hall processing & packing, sales order picking & dispatch.

In addition to their main primal processing plants, Emydex is now also installed in two further processing plants on the MeatCo Windhoek site that are the Wholesale and Cannery processing plants. Current plans are for MeatCo’s IT staff to themselves complete the Emydex systems roll-out to its other two beef processing plants located North of the veterinary fence in Oshikati and Katima Mulilo. Both deployments will be supported remotely by Emydex’s Implementation team of developers based in Emydex’s HQ in Dublin, Ireland.
At this point there are just under 100 Emydex data capture devices (consisting of PC terminals and hand-held scanners) installed across MeatCo’s four plants operational with Emydex, that include a number of Animal Health and Quality Assurance inspection stations on both Kill line systems, as well as Industrial PC stations covering Dentition, Grading, Primal labelling, Carton Packing, VET Seals, Recipe formulation and Dry Goods stock management.

The Emydex system in MeatCo also provides functionality for 3rd party carcass intake, carcass splitting as well as dispatch. The system is fully integrated to MeatCo’s group wide-ERP system (Sage X3), and has interfaces built to a number of 3rd party Cold Stores in both Africa and Europe.

Having tested and implemented the Emydex kill line & payments system in the Okahandja plant, the same kill line system was later installed in Windhoek over a weekend, going live the following Monday. A fast paced install. “The MeatCo kill line is unique compared to our European kill line systems”, said Emydex CEO David McMahon, “Grading is carried out over two separate stations for example, one per side, allowing different destinations to be associated with each side of an animal, allowing for condemnation or part condemnation of only one side of an animal.”

Commenting on the completion of this main phase of the Emydex project that took just over 12 months to complete, McMahon said “MeatCo have been the ideal customer for Emydex to work with. Highly professional and organised with regard to working with our development and implementation teams on the planning, testing, training and go-live phases of the project. The project ran smoothly over the past 12 months, and we’re delighted to hear now that MeatCo feel they have the sufficient knowledge, in-house capabilities and confidence to continue themselves with completion of our system roll-out to their two remaining processing plants. Our support team will be on-hand to support them 24/7 should it be required.”

Nico Weck, MeatCo’s Group Chief Financial Officer said “Now that the Emydex installation is complete in both our main processing operations, we have a robust Traceability control and reporting system in place that provides our management team with real-time feedback on our production processes. The flexibility that is inherent within Emydex means we can quickly and easily add additional reporting as it is required by the business. ”
For more information on our Beef Processing Software click here

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5th Year in a row at Deloitte Fast 50 Awards

Emydex Technology Fast 50 Award 2016

Emydex Technology are delighted to be included in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards for the 5th year in a row, achieving some 528% cumulative growth in revenue since the first year entered.

The awards, which are in their seventeenth year in Ireland, recognise the contribution of indigenous companies to the overall technology sector in Ireland, and indeed the overall economy. Cumulatively, the 2016 Fast 50 winners generated approximately €1.6 billion in total annual revenues in 2015.

Emydex supply Factory Floor Software systems to market leading Meat, Fish and Food Processing companies around the world. Today Emydex’s Production Management Software is running in over 80 processing plants, spread across Ireland, the UK, Europe, Southern Africa and Australasia.

David McMahon, Emydex CEO attributes ongoing success to global expansion “Today Emydex are signing up more International customers than domestic ones, seven new customers in 2016 include companies in Australia, South Africa, Canada and the Philippines.”

The awards took place in the Double Tree by Hilton Dublin, on Friday 04th November 2016. Joan O’Connor, Partner, Deloitte said “We are delighted to be recognising these exceptional and innovative Irish companies. Their contribution to the technology sector is critical to the success of the industry overall in Ireland and it is clear from the turnover derived from exports that they are having considerable success in global markets also. This ambition is hugely encouraging to see and will be increasingly important in a post-Brexit marketplace, where pressure on margins may necessitate diversification into other markets. For this reason, and due to the wealth of opportunity that presents itself, we expect developed and emerging markets to be increasingly important for Irish technology companies. The success that has been achieved to date by the indigenous technology sector leaves them well placed to capitalise on this momentum.”

Details of the final Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ranking list are available to download at www.fast50.ie

 

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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”.

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Traceability System Live in La Rousse Foods

DUBLIN/BELFAST – IRELAND:
With operations located in Dublin and Belfast, La Rousse Foods specialise in the supply of fine foods to premium food establishments since 1992. Acquired by the Swiss-based food group Aryzta in 2015, the company has more than 1,300 corporate customers in Ireland, and have their own catering butchery, cheese-maturing room and chocolate lab. La Rousse offer a wide range of fresh, seasonal and innovative premium produce from a network of local and international producers.

La Rousse approached Emydex in 2014 with a requirement to implement a robust factory floor Traceability and Production management system to replace manual operations in both their Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. La Rousse were looking for a factory floor IT system that would provide them with real-time, accurate reporting on production, yields and Stocks, with full forwards and backwards food chain Traceability from factory door to door. For shop floor equipment La Rousse opted to implement Bizerba industrial weighing scales, harsh environment terminals as well as printers.

They were previously operating a paper based Traceability and Quality Assurance recording and reporting system, which was time consuming to both administer and report on. Stock control was also a manual operation which was labour intensive and time consuming. Previously the Cheese Operations area operated with a Microsoft Dynamics Nav system, whereby Purchase Orders for Intake were keyed directly into a Nav form running on an office PC located at Cheese Intake.

Weights and traceability information were later keyed in manually against the purchase orders. La Rousse identified a requirement for a software system that fully integrated with Navision in real time and replaced the manual in-put of weights and traceability information, as well as to manage the processing, packing, order picking and dispatch of cheeses to end-customers.

In parallel, La Rousse were planning to double the size of their existing catering butchery operations by building a new purpose-built state-of-the-art butchery on a site adjacent to their existing operation in Dublin. For this new operation, La Rousse also needed a factory floor system capable of production managing this new production facility from factory door-to-door.

Cheese Processing Software

Phase one of the project saw the rollout of Emydex’s Production Management Software to the Cheese Operations covering intake, processing & packing, picking & dispatch, returns both to/from suppliers and customers and QC Hold.  Due to the flexible nature of the software, Emydex were able to integrate to la Rousse’s existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, providing a seamless real-time interface between both systems.

Packing and Processing Software

Phase two was a much more substantial project seeing the rollout of Emydex’s Packing & Processing software module to the new catering butchery operation running on fifteen  Bizerba  industrial terminals, connected to  Bizerba Industrial Weighing scales and printers covering operations such as Intake, Debagging, Deboning, Dry Aging, Preparation Lines, Metal Detection and Packing. Emydex’s Warehouse management module is also installed, running on a number of intelligent handheld scanning terminals covering Internal stock movements as well as sales order picking and dispatch.

Today La Rousse now have a comprehensive Production management software system that is fully integrated with their back-office ERP system.

Commenting on the Emydex project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “La Rousse Foods were a great fit customer for Emydex to work with. A professional run company from the outset, the La Rousse Foods project team had a clear vision as to their system needs, with defined project objectives and requirements. They were insistent in seeking to understand the precise inputs and outputs to each and every stage of their production processes, with the result that today they have an Emydex system that provides both bullet-proof traceability processes, as well as accurate and real-time accurate reporting on Production, Yields and Stocks.”

Stuart Campbell, General Manager with La Rousse Foods added “Emydex have provided us with a robust Factory Floor Traceability and Production Management system for both our Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. Our Management team now have accurate real time reporting on production, yields and stocks as well as full forwards and backwards food chain traceability from factory door to door.”

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Emydex sign 6 new customers in Southern Hemisphere

Following previous customer successes implementing Emydex software systems in leading meat processors in both Namibia (MeatCo) and Botswana (BMC), Emydex today report six further new customer signings in the Southern Hemisphere spread over South Africa, Australia and the Philippines.

In January 2016, Emydex signed contracts with Klein Karoo, the world’s largest ostrich processor, with their head-quarters in Oudtshoorn, South Africa. The project will see Emydex factory floor systems installed in Klein Karoo’s three Ostrich Abattoir and Deboning operations located in Oudtshoorn, Graff-Reinet and Swellendam. Working in partnership with iPlan Global, Emydex’s local market partner based in Pretoria, the Emydex software systems installed will cover both local as well as export operations, including kill lines, deboning and value-added operations.

In Australia, following go-live of Emydex’s lamb kill line system in Junee Lamb in New South Wales, Emydex has signed up three further leading beef processors, all based in Victoria. The first beef installation is due to go live shortly, with the other two Beef kill line projects about to commence in parallel. All three projects will see implementation of Emydex’s beef kill line and payments system, Emydex’s Packing and Processing as well as Warehouse Management modules into the boning room operations. The implementation of all four meat factory projects implemented in Australia will be overseen by Emydex’s Australian distributor based in Brisbane, as well one of Emydex’s senior software engineers now living in the region.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, work is well underway on an Emydex Traceability and Production reporting system for Meliomar, a leading Tuna Processor based in Pasay City. Working under the Artesmar fisheries improvement programme developed by Blueyou Consulting in Switzerland, Meliomar has also developed a unique traceability system with Emydex that incorporates the tagging of each individual tuna upon landing, which allows the company to reliably trace all tuna products direct from their origin. “The investments Meliomar makes into its traceability system and the program of fishery improvement are significant”, said Blueyou.

Commenting on the customer successes in the region, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “Emydex is well established in the Southern Africa region since our first implementation there back in 2013. System roll-outs are now well underway in Australia, with further prospects in New Zealand. In addition to focussing on the continued growth and development of these two new important markets, we are also busy working on a pipeline of opportunities, seeking our first Emydex implementation in North America.”

After a few months researching the potential market, Terry McCorriston, based in Ontario, who previously worked with a number of ERP vendors in Canada, was appointed in March 2016 as a distributor for Emydex in North America. “Terry has extensive experience in implementing production planning and shop floor solutions in one of Canada’s largest meat processing companies, so he has the requisite market domain knowledge as well as systems expertise”, added McMahon.

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