Careers Contact Downloads |

Food Processing Software Solutions

Company News

Home / Archives for Company News

IT Solutions in the Food Industry Event on 28th May

IT Solutions for the food industry

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

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

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

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

For Plant Managers & IT Managers

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

For Production & IT Managers

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

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

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

For Finance & IT Managers

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

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

For Quality & Technical Managers

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

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

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

Request a Demo

Emydex at MeatUp UK 2013

MeatUP UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

Request a Demo

New Senior Industry Hires

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

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

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

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

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

Updated August 2013

Emma Flynn

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

Patricia Ramos

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

Request a Demo

Emydex opens New Product Development office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Request a Demo

7.5m Head of Livestock

Those in charge of the mammoth administrative task of buying and tracing 7.5m head of livestock per year in Ireland have emerged intact from the horse burger controversy.

Much of the credit must go to companies like Emydex in Dublin.

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.

The system includes real-time links to both the government-run animal movement and tracking systems as well as quality assurance schemes, and provides for full meat traceability.

It manages the complex system of payments to farmers, but also enables customers to run their food production lines more efficiently; manage, control and report on stock; analyse their yields and costs; and report on food chain traceability and factory and operator performance.

Today, Emydex is running in four out of the top five meat producing companies on the island of Ireland, and in more than 40 plants spread all over Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France.

The company is celebrating its rollout in the Dawn Meats Group, one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British beef, pork and lamb in Europe, and an Emydex customer since 2007. It is planned to complete the Emydex roll-out across the group in 2013, including the lamb processing in Ballyhaunis.

Emydex also supplies software to Kepak, and the Dunbia Group and Moy Park in the UK. The software runs on any compatible hardware system.

Just how complex the challenge is can be seen in the very first step of the meat chain, procuring livestock and paying for them.

Each year, Irish export plants buy almost 1.4 million cattle, 2.5m sheep, and 3.5 million pigs …

Request a Demo

Oliver Carty improves financial management with Simply Dynamics

Oliver Carty Brand
Simply Dynamics improves financial management for Ireland’s largest bacon producer

  • ERP solution from Simply Dynamics enabling 50% time reduction to run financial reports for Oliver Carty
  • 40% reduction in time to complete cheque run process for finance department
  • Robust EDI inbound and outbound message management

Dublin, 26th February 2013 – Simply Dynamics, a leading provider of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, today announced that it has implemented an ERP solution for Irish pork, bacon and rasher producer Oliver Carty. The new solution is supporting the company’s on-going expansion and providing them with greater visibility and management of key financial functions.

The Simply Dynamics engagement with Oliver Carty has a contract to the value of €80,000.

After a site visit and analysis of their existing systems, Emydex proposed to implement their replacement Production Management system in two initial project phases.

Oliver Carty is a family run Irish business located in Athlone and is one of Ireland’s largest producers of bacon. It currently has 140 employees which increases substantially at different times of the year to meet seasonal demand and has a turnover of €45 million. Oliver Carty supplies a range of branded and own brand pork, bacon and rasher products to Ireland’s key retailers.

Oliver Carty operated an amalgamation of four different software systems, namely financial, intake, production, and dispatch. The interaction between the four systems was minimal, causing serious delays with the availability of real-time information and reporting bottlenecks.

After a full analysis of the existing software, Oliver Carty decided to replace their entire system with two fully integrated software solutions that could manage all of the financial and factory floor production processes from door-to-door.

Simply Dynamics was chosen for its Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP solution. Microsoft Dynamics NAV is providing the finance department with immediate access to information such as order history, credit management, order status, and claims processing.

Oliver Carty has achieved some significant benefits as a result of the new solution including a 50% reduction in the time taken to run financial reports and a 40% reduction in the time to complete the cheque run process.

The Microsoft Dynamics Nav system delivered by Simply Dynamics integrates fully with Oliver Carty’s production management software, which was provided by Emydex Technology. The combination of the Simply Dynamics and Emydex systems enables communication and synchronisation of both master and transactional data from all departments within the organisation to Microsoft Dynamics Nav. This fully integrated solution can now be applied to any future Emydex and Simply Dynamics implementations.

Nicole Verdon, financial controller, Oliver Carty said, “The integration between Simply Dynamics and Emydex provides us with instant visibility and traceability across the entire organisation. The Simply Dynamics solution has also streamlined all our processes and we now have real-time access to our key performance indicators such as yield, pricing and invoicing data for the company.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is also enabling Oliver Carty to manage multiple sales order processes including Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) which is essential in the food distribution industry for communication with its retail customers. It also has the ability to account for catch weights, enabling Oliver Carty to manage products priced by weight but whose weight varies.

Ted Carty, managing director, Oliver Carty commented, “We operate in a market where the price of raw materials are constantly changing so we need to have the most accurate information at any given time. Simply Dynamics has provided us with highly integrated, real-time information at our fingertips, enabling us to make fast and smart business decisions.”

Willie Fitzgerald, Sales Manager, Simply Dynamics said, “Microsoft Dynamics NAV has given Oliver Carty the ability to simplify access to business critical financial information and enhance its control and visibility over an expanding business. As the company continues to grow Microsoft Dynamics NAV has the flexibility to change and grow with them and meet the unique needs of a company operating in the food distribution industry.”

David McMahon, CEO, Emydex said “the Emydex factory floor data capture and production reporting system is designed to be ‘open’ such that it can interface to, and exchange data with any 3rd party ERP or financial system, as well as any 3rd party Cold Store or Supplier systems. The fact we have now collaborated closely with Simply Dynamics to build a bridge to Microsoft’s NAV ERP system is a win-win for all parties but especially our customers. “Build once, use many times” means the integration points between Emydex and NAV come practically out-of-the-box reducing installation and testing time and hence cost.”

Oliver Carty plans to extend its Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution to incorporate other areas of the business such as inventory and warehousing over the coming months.

Source article: Simply Dynamics – Oliver Carty news article
For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

Request a Demo