Careers Contact Downloads |

Food Processing Software Solutions

Company News

Home / Archives for Company News

Emydex climbs 10 places in Deloitte Fast 50 awards 2013

Emydex Technology fast 50 2013

Emydex attributes growth to niche focus on providing Traceability Software solutions for Food Processors

Emydex Technology today announced that it ranked 16th in the 2013 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Ireland. Rankings are based on average percentage revenue growth over five years, which for Emydex represents 375% growth since 2008. This year’s result represents a climb of ten places over last year’s Fast 50 ranking when Emydex achieved 26th position

Emydex’s CEO, David McMahon, credits Emydex’s single minded focus on providing data capture & production reporting software systems to leading Food Processing companies with the company’s growth over the past five years.

“There are many opportunities and temptations to expand Emydex’s product and service offerings in new directions, such as supplying industrial hardware in addition to software, or supplying software systems into new industries, but by sticking to the knitting and focussing on what you are really good at, makes for successful project roll-outs, and happy customers, and that’s what ultimately drives growth.” said David McMahon, Emydex CEO

The Fast 50 programme, now in its fourteenth year in Ireland, ranks the fastest growing technology companies in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This year, there are 18 companies from Northern Ireland in the ranking. The average growth rate of the Fast 50 companies named in this year’s ranking is 361%.

The awards took place in the Titanic building in Belfast on Friday 8 November. Paul Lee, Head of Global Research for Technology, Media and Telecommunications at Deloitte was keynote speaker at the event. Media sponsors included the Sunday Business Post and Ulster Business and corporate sponsors of the event were Invest NI.

Request a Demo

Arthur Mallon’s fully operational with Emydex

Mallons Brand

Arthur Mallon Foods specialise in the production of fresh, frozen and cooked sausages. They supply fresh and frozen pork, to the major Irish retailers and export frozen pork sausage to Holland. Mallon’s sausages have won multiple awards in Ireland, UK and France and have achieved two Great Taste Awards in 2012. They operate from a purpose built modern production facility in Hilden, Co. Monaghan.

Arthur Mallon Foods identified a requirement to upgrade their existing production management systems to a single production management system that was scalable and flexible to meet with growing demands for specific industry, customer and supplier requirements. They required a single system to manage and report on order control, stock control, recipe formulation, traceability, quality control and yield control. With these objectives in mind they contacted Emydex in 2012.

Phase 1 – In order to minimise disruption to normal day operations, the project was split into a number of smaller project phases. Starting at the end, in Phase 1 Emydex customised their Packing & Processing module to suit Mallon’s particular needs including features such as Unit, Box and Pallet Labelling. Packing stations allow operators to work to Packing Work Orders whilst enabling them to switch quickly between Work Orders.

As part of this same project phase, Emydex’s Warehouse Management module covering Dispatch was implemented ‘off-the-shelf’ with only a few tweaks required to meet their particular requirements. “The key point about Emydex software is the standard module offerings are very comprehensive and cover almost everything we need, and if they don’t have specifically what we need, it’s not a major hassle to change it” said Paul Kearney in Arthur Mallon Foods.

In parallel with the Emydex factory floor install

Mallons also upgraded their ERP system, and Emydex integrated seamlessly with this. Sales orders are keyed into their financial system and then sent directly to Emydex for order picking and dispatching. Purchase orders are generated within Emydex, and then exported to the financial system upon receipt of goods.

Phase 2 of the project covered Raw Material and Dry Goods Intake, as well as Issuing Stock into Production via handheld scanners to ensure stock levels are accurately maintained.

Phase 3, Emydex’s Recipe formulation system is currently being implemented, and about to go-live. This module will track and control the levels of ingredients being issued to recipes as well as the calculating yields from finished recipes. Implementing the recipe system will assist Arthur Mallon’s with Quality Control and Traceability reporting, as well as provide key information in real-time to the floor managers as to the performance of the line.

“Already we are seeing the advantages of having Emydex as well as the capabilities and possibilities for the future. With the software and the excellent backup and service from all the staff in Emydex we feel we have the complete package.” Paul Kearney
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

Request a Demo

Emydex Products Update

Emydex’s dedicated Product Development team of 5 developers now work out of a separate innovation centre located in Unit 13, Northwest Centre. The team have been busy over the past 6 months working on next our generation Emydex software systems including Emydex Standard Systems, an iteration of the Emydex platform hosted in the cloud (Emydex-On-Demand) as well as many more new features including a new direct label printing (DLP) engine. The product development team are also re-engineering our core internal tool chain and libraries with the creation of a new CCL (Common Core Libraries).

Emydex Standard Systems

As the Emydex platform has matured over the past 10 years, we have seen commonalities emerge in the features our customer’s request. Overtime, functionality has begun to gravitate towards a standardised set of rules and methodologies. In tandem we have asked by some food processors to provide Emydex systems with less reliance on customisation in favour of ease and speed of installation, deployment, usage and management.

Typically smaller to medium sizes food processors have enquired after such standardised systems. The Emydex Standard Systems (ESS) project takes all the Emydex experience and know-how gained in designing and deploying production management systems for our customers over the past 10 years, to produce our standard versions of each essential component within in a typical end-to-end food production process from Intake, through Into-Production, Packing, Labelling, Order Picking and Dispatch

Standard Intake: The goal of this project phase is to standardise the process of goods-in and quality control. We will take a number of different features from existing systems and blend them together to provide a standardised Intake module. This new module will be released on our MDA software (that can operate on Industrial PC terminals) and is broken down into the following deliverables:

  • Initial Intake
  • QC Hold and Intake Returns
  • QC Release
  • Post Intake / Raw Goods In

product_update

You may also notice we have done a lot of work around our new embedded scales indicator, including re-skinning and adding further validation functionality around limits and checks. This indicator is just one of the new standardised components being built in tandem with standard packing:

productupdate_02

Standard Warehousing: This project phase will see a re-write of our standard dispatch warehousing system (SDA) that typically runs on hand-held scanning terminals such as the Motorola Symbol MC9090 range. Some key deliverables of the SDA standardisation project will include:

  1. Swapping out Windows CE database running on handhelds for SQL Lite eliminating the requirement to install IIS on local servers and to sync via IIS services. SQL lite is also a higher performing database than SQL CE.
  2. Customising the SDA application to work with Emydex-on-demand i.e., delivery via the cloud, licencing and subscription services for value-added/overseas resellers
  3. Reworking of SDA application to work more seamlessly with higher resolution screen-sizes eg., MC9190
  4. Creating a version of the new CCL to work with the compact framework
  5. Standardisation of SDA forms such as:
  • QC Release
  • Into Production
  • Return From Production
  • To Rework
  • Palletizing
  • Movements
  • Stock Reconciliation/Cycle
  • Order Picking
  • Shipments
  • Customer Returns

The Emydex Standard Systems project takes the best of each of our systems and applies a common standard across the whole suite of products. Configuration will be provided; that will allow each customer to configure their system to meet their own needs without the need for Business Logic or custom code written by Emydex. While configuration is not as extensible as customisation, we feel it will provide ample personalisation for smaller food processors who do not have m/any internal IT staff.

Emydex On-Demand

Emydex on Demand is an iteration of Emydex delivered via and powered by the cloud (Microsoft Windows Azure). Emydex on Demand will enable Emydex to deploy systems to our customers in a fraction of the time, to maintain and upgrade systems quicker and easier, and allow customers more freedom than any comparable system on the market in terms of installation availability.

Many distributors working within our specialised food processing industries, both here and overseas, have expressed a desire to have the ability to install and manage Emydex systems for their customers. Traditionally the level of customisation desired by customers meant that only Emydex and it’s team could reasonably manage a customers requests. With Emydex on Demand and its configuration model, we will be able to provide a partner system with industry champions who wish to offer Emydex as a solution to their customers. Both Emydex and it’s partners will be able to support customers ranging from small all the way to enterprise level and provide standardised solutions with custom configuration on a per customer basis.

Direct Label printing

Traditionally label printing has presented a bottleneck for fast paced production. Because of the complexity of label design and templating, printing is usually provided via Windows Spooler or via supporting functionality from a given Label Designer company, both of which are slow. Our innovation team has designed a new direct label printing engine that allows customers to design labels in a third party label designer (we currently support NiceLabel) and import them into their Emydex system. By importing the label in to Emydex we can then optimise and print the label directly over TCP or Serial resulting in noticeably quicker print times. The direct label printing engine will be available for our Client, PCA, and MDA for all customers. Emydex will continue to support and maintain Nice Labels in tandem which will better suit our customers that require more WISIWIG type functionality, but for those in the need of high-speed label printing (such as retail production lines) the DLP engine will be the better option.

Common Core Libraries

At Emydex we have an extensive collection of internal tooling and support libraries which enable us to build great software. The Common Core Libraries or CCL for short is a reworking of these libraries and tools that includes automated testing, improved documentation and modernisation. While the CCL is an internal project for the most part, the improvements it brings will be noticeable from a customer’s perspective. Some of the deliverables of interest to our customers include:

  • A completely new and powerful logging system which will provide testers and support with detailed and relevant information for the purposes of troubleshooting or diagnostics. With this new system we are able to identify slowdowns and bottlenecks in our software down to 1/3rd of a millisecond.
  • A modern and robust threading model. Threading is complicated but it allows software to be much more responsive by allowing tasks to run in the background without impacting the front end. We have built a new threading model that is much easier to implement and manage from a developers perspective. This will allow our developers to run more work as background tasks, which in turn will improve the responsiveness of our system.
  • We now use the CCL as a test bed for a specific type of testing (Unit testing). Unit tests are extremely small, automated tests. These tests break code down into logical units and test if the unit behaves as expected. What makes unit tests so useful is the fact that thousands of tests can be ran at the click of a button with no interaction from a developer.

Emydex Standard Systems, Emydex-on-Demand, Direct Label Printing and other products and enhancements like CCL represent Emydex’s continuing drive to evolve to meet the needs of customers now and in the future.

By investing heavily in our existing products and innovating based on customers’ needs we feel we are in the best position possible to provide systems that work to optimise and support your business.

Request a Demo

Columbus partner with Emydex Technology

Columbus Global

Annesley, Notthinghamshire

Columbus and Emydex Technology are proud to announce their partnership for excellence in the Meat and Fish industries. Two of the leading Food industry solution specialists have joined forces to integrate their products, offering a total plant solution pre-configured for the red meat, poultry and fish Industries.

Emydex software is designed to manage Food production processes from door to door, from arrival of animals to the abattoir, through kill line, boning hall, warehousing and dispatch. Columbus, with deep engagement in the food industry, build targeted solution sets on top of the reliable Microsoft Dynamics AX platform.

The blended solution, developed jointly by Columbus and Emydex, allows for 2-way integration between Emydex and Dynamics AX, linking the shop-floor seamlessly to the rest of the organization without a glitch.

Typically smaller to medium sizes food processors have enquired after such standardised systems. The Emydex Standard Systems (ESS) project takes all the Emydex experience and know-how gained in designing and deploying production management systems for our customers over the past 10 years, to produce our standard versions of each essential component within in a typical end-to-end food production process from Intake, through Into-Production, Packing, Labelling, Order Picking and Dispatch

Mary Hunter, MD of Columbus UK, states: ‘I am excited about this new solution, it highlights our commitment to the meat industry and has many benefits for key customers such as the Kepak Group. The integration to Emydex fits perfectly in Columbus’ vertical strategy and enhances our position as a total Food solution provider, supporting best of breed solutions’.

David Mcmahon, MD of Emydex, agrees: ‘After 10 years of continuous product development and finetuning, our tailored software solutions have a significant depth and breadth of functionality developed specifically for the red meat, poultry and fish industries. Our customers can now easily combine this with the power of Dynamics AX. By partnering with a global industry focused consultancy like Columbus, we know we have joined forces with a company that can offer a low risk implementation to the specialised food processing industries.’

About Columbus

Columbus is an international consultancy serving customers worldwide. We are experts in developing and providing business applications to the retail, food and manufacturing industries. We’ve proved this through 20 years of experience with more than 6,000 successful business cases. Columbus has offices and partners all around the world.

For more information please contact Mary Hunter (UK) on +44(0)1623 72 99 77 or emailmhun@columbusglobal.com.

About Emydex

Emydex is the leading provider of Production Management software systems to Meat & Fish producers in Ireland and the UK, counting 6 of the top 10 Meat processor groups in Ireland as Customers. Today Emydex’s factory floor data capture, production reporting and traceability systems are running on over 600 Industrial PC terminals, as well as 500 scanning terminals, in over Food 50 production sites located across Ireland, the UK and France.

Request a Demo

Emydex Customers grow via Acquisitions and Expansions

Emydex’s existing customer base has grown significantly over the past 18 months, with Emydex customers adding 10 new sites to their existing food processing operations. Whether a sign that Irish & UK based Agri-food industries continue to perform strongly in a global market downturn or a sign that food processors that invest in Emydex systems continue to be successful or both, it is certainly a positive development for all parties involved.

Most recently the Kepak Group announced the take-over of ABP’s beef processing facility in Ballybay, Ireland (formerly Silvercrest) on the back of winning the Burger King contract to exclusively supply burgers to Burger King Restaurants in Ireland and the UK1. The acquisition safeguards 125 jobs at the Ballybay facility.

Also announced in the past few months, Euro Farm Foods are to extend their beef abattoir processing facility in Duleek, Ireland by adding a new boning hall operation that will create 50 new jobs for the region2.

In addition a recent Emydex customer Kavanagh Meats in Co Wexford, Ireland has begun work on a new project with Emydex to build a new Beef and Lamb abattoir to add to their existing Beef and Lamb Boning hall operation in Enniscorthy. Meanwhile in Scotland, Vivers/Scotlamb this month (July 2013) announced their intention to extend their Emydex lamb kill line system into their existing Lamb boning hall operation in Dumfries.

All these developments follow a series of expansions and acquisitions by two of Emydex’s largest group customers over the past 18 months. The Dunbia group last month opened a £12m revamp of their Lamb processing facility in Llanybydder, Wales that includes an innovative de-boning operation provided by Emydex in conjunction with SF Engineering3. This follows the Dunbia Groups’ acquisition of the G Woods pork processing operation in Mansfield, England in March 20134, as well as the acquisition of Heathfield Foods in Crewe, England in November 20115.

The Dawn Meats group, one of Ireland’s largest food processors opened a new €14m facility in Carroll’s Cross, Ireland in June 20126. The 40,000 square foot facility was purpose built to service a €300 million contract to process up to 18,000 tonnes of Irish beef annually for McDonald’s. The beef processing facility produce up to three million hamburgers per day, which are exported abroad to McDonald’s markets throughout Europe. This new plant follows the Dawn group’s acquisitions of West Devon Meats, England in April 20127 as well as Duerden Meats, England in September 20118.

References

  1. http://www.irishtimes.com/burger-king-signs-deal-with-kepak-1.1402663
  2. http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news/factory-to-create-50-new-jobs-as-extension-approved-27167807.html
  3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22813800
  4. http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Business-News/Dunbia-aquires-family-pork-processor-G-Wood-Sons
  5. http://www.dunbia.com/Default.aspx?ResourcePath=Heathfield%20Foods
  6. http://www.dawnmeats.com/index.php/latest-news/item/84-an-taoiseach-enda-kenny-officially-opens-%E2%82%AC145-million-beef-processing-facility-in-waterford
  7. http://www.dawnmeats.com/index.php/latest-news/item/89-dawn-meats-acquires-west-devon-meats
  8. http://www.dawnmeats.com/index.php/latest-news/item/100-dawn-meats-acquires-beef-abattoir-in-the-english-lake-district

 

Request a Demo

Emydex Customer Satisfaction at an all-time High across the board

Emydex’s latest customer satisfaction survey conducted during April 2013 shows all time high scores across all metrics measured. Feedback is received from at least one person from every live customer, and at least 2 people within our larger group customers. In all cases the people surveyed are in Emydex-facing roles, and deal with Emydex staff on a regular basis. The latest survey includes feedback from 26 people working for Emydex customers, and covers customer satisfaction with:

  1. Quality of the system – performance, usability, bug free etc.
  2. Execution Timeliness – adherence to agreed project deadlines and milestones
  3. Meeting Expectations (how did we measure up at the end versus expectations at the start?)
  4. Quality of Customer Support
  5. Satisfaction with your Lead Programmer (how happy are you with your lead programmer?)
  6. Recommendation – Likelihood of recommending Emydex to a colleague or friend
  7. Overall Satisfaction

A summary of the scores received across all customers is listed below. In the case of all 6 questions, these scores are higher in each instance than scores and feedback received in our last survey conducted in October 2012

Emydex Overall Quality Satisfaction

Of particular importance is the improvement, in the opinion of our customers with the Overall Quality of the Emydex software system, that has seen satisfaction grow steadily over the past 2 years from a 79% satisfaction rating in October 2011 to a rating of 86% in April 2013.

This may be in part explained by the fact that Emydex now has a separate product development team dedicated to the further development and improvement of the core software platform and modules.

The team have since February 2013 moved to a separate office to give the team ‘head-space’ and also to facilitate growth in both the Project Implementation and Customer Support Teams in Unit 10.

Quality of Solution (usability, Speed, Performance, Bug Free etc.)
Emydex - Quality of Solutions Results

Satisfaction levels with Software Quality

Emydex Soloutions Team

Emydex Product Development Team

The knock-on effect of improvement in overall software quality, is that satisfaction with our Customer Supportteam has also risen in line, most likely as a result of a combination of less bugs being reported in the software, and more staff being added to the Emydex support team that now stands at five full-time dedicated people, soon to be six. One customer comment to highlight came from Simon Fletcher in Moy Park Ballymena, who said “Emydex provide an excellent Product and an excellent service. I wish all our Suppliers/Support operated with the same ethos and work ethic”.

Quality of Customer Support
Emydex - Quality of Customer Support

Satisfaction levels with Customer Support

Customer Support Team

Emydex Customer Support Team

The last metric to highlight relates to Emydex Customer satisfaction levels with their lead programmer, the main software developer tasked with tailoring an Emydex solution to match each customer’s specific business requirements exactly. With Customer Satisfaction with their lead programmer now standing at an 87% satisfaction rating, this demonstrates the level of knowledge our delivery team has of food processing industries, as well as their technical skill levels and abilities.

Satisfaction with Lead Programmer

Satisfaction with Emydex Lead Programmers

Emydex Programmer Delivery Team
Emydex Project Delivery Team

Request a Demo