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Product News

Home / Archives for Company News / Product News

Enterprise Management Software

9th November 2021

A new era in Food Enterprise Management Software Applications

Emydex’s new suite of Enterprise Management Software (EMS) applications are designed specifically for multi-faceted food processing companies, those which are mainly multi-plant operations, usually overseen by a group HQ plant. Typically, these plants are spread geographically across a country or several countries and would be large food processing organisations. 

It is difficult to maintain data integrity across these often-complex businesses, is often labour intensive and prone to human error with the duplication of information across multiple systems. 

Emydex’s answer to this problem is the Emydex Enterprise Management System (EMS) suite of software which comprises a series of web apps targeted specifically at maintaining data integrity, reducing data entry, and improving control across plants. 

From a system architecture point of view, the EMS layer resides between the customer ERP system and the various operating plants.

The EMS layer of the Emydex software stack is made up of several web apps tailored towards solving these problems for multi-plant customers.

 

Business Intelligence (BI)

Emydex BI is the latest app of the Enterprise layer allowing customers to surface data to provide visual real-time and trending analytical dashboards. Sitting at the corporate level allows integration to multiple plants to surface data as well as other third-party systems such as ERP & financial systems.  Find out more here

 

Master Data Management (MDM)

Master Data Management (MDM) is designed to control data integrity to ensure it is consistent across all plants. The Master data management module allows customers to centrally manage master data such as products, label designs, kill line destinations as well as other required data.

This removes the effort needed by plant staff to replicate data into each instance of Emydex which instantly reduces the risk of human error. With EMS MDM, corporate users can centrally control all aspects of master data which creates consistency across the business. An example of this is that if a label design is managed centrally, the label will look identical, no matter the plant it was produced from, which from a customer's point of view can be critical. This can also reduce incorrect labelling which can cause product recalls and market rejections, impacting the business brand and reputation.

 

EMS App Deployment

This app empowers the Emydex customer's IT department to take control of deploying the Emydex applications out to the plants. This increases IT security and allows the IT department to pull updates into the business network to then choose when to deploy to the individual plants. This in turn allows the customer to be more self-sufficient in relation to updating plant's MES software outside of production.

 

EMS Exchange

EMS Exchange is Emydex’s newest approach to integration between the plants and third-party systems such as ERP systems and cold stores. It allows for the configuration of rules to route data from one system to other(s). This reduces the customisation required to integrate the Emydex applications into other third-party systems

 


Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS)

Emydex’s first Enterprise module was the Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) which allows customers to centrally control, capture, store and report on various quality & technical aspects of their operations.
Find out more here…

 

The future of EMS

The Emydex new product development team are busy working on new apps and features to further extend and enhance our offerings, including additional EMS modules such as Centralised Product Specifications, Production Planning, Payments, Livestock Appointments and Yield Costing. 

Watch this space!

 

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, South Africa or North America offices

Request a Demo

Filed Under: Africa, Australasia, Carcass Management, Company News, ERP Systems Integration, Europe, Industry News, Kill Line & Settlements, Markets, North America, Packing Management, Product News, Production Planning, Quality Management, Recipe Formulation, Software, Traceability Reporting, Warehouse Management, Yields & Costings

Emydex CEO Update

19th October 2021

A note from Emydex CEO, David McMahon

After the year of uncertainty, travel restrictions and lockdowns that was 2020, this year 2021 has seen a gradual return to normality, albeit with the markets we serve being in different stages of recovery, with Europe ahead of our colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand in terms of numbers vaccinated.

The Emydex country teams, still mainly working from home, are busy working on a number of large customer projects. These include Emydex V5 system upgrades for some of our larger multi-plant customers in Ireland, as well as continuing to build ‘group standard solutions for some of our newer multi-site processors in Europe, Canada as well as New Zealand

Throughout 2021, Emydex has continued to solidify its position as a global provider of MES solutions by building out our people and bases in the further stretches of the world including New Zealand and in North America, where new customers and new employees have been added to both Emydex companies established at the end of 2020

On the Product Development front, our software has evolved from our traditional 3-tiered software stack comprising the core platform, software modules and business logic, to add two new layers of software.

Our new Automation layer includes a suite of software modules such as the DCI (Data Communications Interface) that enables Emydex software to connect to factory floor automated machines and robots via standard protocols (OPC) as well as a new Simulator module that enables our customers to conduct scenario planning, as well as to test Emydex software in advance of the installation of factory floor machinery and to train operators in advance of go-live

Our new EMS layer of software developed for our enterprise-level multi-site processing customers, includes software modules such as Master Data Management, Emydex BI, EMS Exchange, Centralised Reporting as well as App Deployment, a suite of software applications designed to facilitate the central creation and dissemination of data files from group HQ to remote plants, as well as consolidated analysis and reporting.

Finally, our technology mix has expanded beyond our traditional windows desktop applications running on-premise, to complement these with new web-based applications (Blazor) as well as Android applications (Xamarin) such as our new XDA for handheld scanning applications, a replacement for our legacy SDA application running on the end-of-life windows mobile operating system.

Looking to the future, Emydex plans to continue to grow our teams of people in Ireland, North America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as form new strategic partnerships with global providers of Industrial equipment, ERP integrators and MES consultancy firms with specialist knowledge of the workings of the meat, fish and food processing industries.

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, South Africa or North America offices

Request a Demo

Filed Under: Africa, Australasia, Cold Storage, Company News, Europe, Industry News, Markets, North America, Product News, Software

Introducing Emydex Business Intelligence (BI)

3rd September 2021

Utilise Analytics to derive Insights into your production data

Data & Information has been referred to as the oil of the 21st century. Having the right data, at the right time, is vital to the success of any food processor.

The first step in this process is ensuring data is collected accurately, in a consistent method. Once captured, this data should be easily accessible and understandable by various stakeholders in the business.

Analysing data will tell stories and show insights that would otherwise go unnoticed. Analytics enables people to see the wood from the trees, to see patterns and trends in large datasets, that can assist with identifying issues within production environments, identify trends within factories, benchmarking business units, reporting KPI’s and can teach you things about your business you didn’t know before – replacing guesswork and gut feel.

How Emydex will help you strike oil

Emydex’s latest software module, Emydex BI, provides Emydex customers with a slick new interface that allows users to easily access and visualise data from any software system including Emydex factory floor Production systems, Emydex’s Quality Management system, 3rd party ERP systems, other shop floor Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES’s) as well as various other third-party systems.

Watch the Emydex Promo Video

Cross Platform App

The Emydex BI app, which is available as both a web app running in a browser or Windows desktop app, provides rich data visualisation for end-users allowing them to drill into, slice and dice and filter various data using sixteen different interactive presentation widgets. Connecting to multiple systems, Emydex BI pulls data from multiple sources into one location, where users can find all the answers they are looking for (as well as questions they didn’t have!)

Sitting at the enterprise level of the Emydex architecture, the Emydex BI tool is easily able to connect to multiple plants systems to access the data depending on the level of security configured per user.

Share & Refresh

Share the results easily with the ability to export the entire dashboard results, or an individual widget at the press of a button.

Individual dashboards can be set up with automatic refresh rates, meaning your data is always up to date!

Design With Ease

Administrator users can easily design and update dashboards using either the web or desktop dashboard editor with tools to bring your data to life.

The Emydex BI App has version control built in, allowing you to update and publish documents with confidence.

The Emydex BI tool also supports static reports, meaning you are able to produce your static formatted reports directly from the Emydex BI tool!

Features

  • Cloud-Based or Windows Desktop
  • Easy to use widgets to visualise data
  • Easily filter/drill down/interrogate data
  • Combine multiple data sources/views into one dashboard
  • Mobile/Tablet access using the web app
  • Configurable automatic update refresh rates

Benefits

  • Reduce reporting time
  • Increase business awareness
  • Real-time access to data
  • Data on the move using mobiles/tablets with the Webapp

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, South Africa or North America offices

Request a Demo

Filed Under: Africa, Australasia, Cold Storage, Company News, Europe, Industry News, Markets, North America, Product News, Software

Emydex expands in the Land of the Long White Cloud

21st June 2021

Emydex’s international reach has extended beyond its base in Brisbane Australia setup in 2016, to the Land of the Long White Cloud or Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand.

 

Incorporated in November 2020, Emdyex New Zealand today includes a headcount of six full-time employees, currently all working remotely from home during the pandemic, although this likely to continue beyond Covid given the employees are spread over the four corners of the two Islands.

Emydex’s Team New Zealand, is a cross-functional team, with in-country expertise to service and support all our local NZ customers that currently includes Silver Fern Farms, with its head-quarters in Dunedin, South Island, as well as Wilson Hellaby with multiple processing plants operating in the North Island. Other new customer signings are also in the mix, some in other industries outside of beef, lamb and pork processing but too early to announce at this time of writing.

The Emdyex New Zealand team is lead by Hermien van den Berg, originally from South Africa, who has over 10 years of Project Management experience in leading project teams throughout the project lifecycle. Hermien is supported by a team five technical resources working on development, implementation and support for our New Zealand customers including: 

Vadim Shegay – Vadim has more than 15 years experience in software development and has considerable experience in C#, SQL, Web API. MCP SQL programming. Vadim joined Emydex New Zealand in January 2021 as Senior Solutions Engineer.

Wayne McRae - Dr. Wayne McRae graduated with a PhD in physics from Otago University, New Zealand in 2000. He joined Emydex Technology in 2021 as a Solutions Engineer, building on his previous experience with C#, Azure services, and SQL

Sian Larcombe - Sian has 10 years experience as a .Net software developer, and has worked across various sectors in the NZ technology industry. She has a bachelor’s in information technology from Whitireia Polytechnic.

 

Kern Carboni - Kern has 25 years of experience in Information Technology throughout various industries worldwide, including several years within the meat processing industry in New Zealand. Kern joined Emydex Technology in 2021 as a Senior Solutions Engineer with experience in C#, Azure services and SQL development. 

Carne de Vreede - Carne has 10 years extensive experience working in the red meat industry in various roles including boning room laborer, boning room knife-hand, boning room administrator as well as later roles including systems support and systems analyst. Carne is currently studying a Bachelor of Computer Science degree in the University of Auckland with the goal of becoming a Software Engineer on the Emdyex systems development team. He is currently providing systems testing & Support to Emydex’s customers in both New Zealand as well as Australia

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, South Africa or North America offices

Request a Demo

Filed Under: Africa, Australasia, Company News, Europe, Industry News, Markets, North America, Product News, Software

Automating factory floor production with Emydex DCI

13th April 2021

Emydex has recently completed a number of customer projects that have integrated on-floor equipment and machinery with the Emydex MES providing significant benefits ranging from reduced labour and cost, improved throughput and real-time reporting.

These projects range from fully integrated kill line systems where carcasses are managed from the beginning of the process through to the carcass chillers and dispatch to automated case weighing and labelling systems

Integrating factory floor has lead to innovations such as communicating customer requirements directly with cutting and trimming equipment on the kill line. This results in carcasses that meet individual customers specification leading to greater satisfaction. Other innovations include ‘hands-free’ case weighing, labelling and lidding, the labelling of products based on their chemical lean content and automated sorting of both case and carcass to the correct storage destination.

These projects have not only reduced the labour cost involved in these usually highly manual processes but have also lead to significant increases in throughput.

The Data Communications Interface (DCI.)

Integrating the equipment on the floor with the Emydex MES is a new module known as the ‘Data Communications Interface’ (DCI). This is the ‘intelligent hub’ that captures the data from the equipment and PLCs on the processing line and directs them as to how they are to act. Whether it is capturing the fat score from an in-line x-ray device and determining the final product code of the item, directing a robot to cut a carcass in a certain way or rejecting a carton for an illegible barcode, the DCI is the brains behind the process.

Using industry-standard communications protocols such as OPC or Telegrams, the system can be integrated into almost any existing production environment. Information collected from devices on the production line allows the Emydex MES to either manage a process or report on production in real-time. This allows production staff to react and manage the process during production rather than after the fact.

The Emydex Simulator

Production environments can be complex and high speed, production downtime is expensive and implementing new systems always carries risk. To reduce this risk and to allow modelling of the processes, Emydex has developed the Simulator module. This provides a graphical interface to the DCI and all the complex devices and control points in a production environment and can model the process from end to end. Each integration point in the process is replicated with the actual data that will be used in the live environment. This may be the output of a PLC or a piece of equipment used in production. This allows the end to end process to be tested without interrupting production thus providing full confidence in the systems ability to work in the live environment.

As part of the simulator integration, Emydex terminals can interact with the simulator and DCI allowing the terminals to run as they would in the live environment. This not only allows the human interface of the system to be tested but also proved a training environment for operators. With the simulator in place, operators can become fully conversant with the system before go-live.

The ability to test the ‘real’ environment in the back office ensures new systems are rolled out with the minimum of impact with staff fully trained and confident with the new environment.

Examples of the Simulator coupled with the DCI’s power include:

  • Lariage pen management which direct staff to the next pen to empty reducing the time required to manually identify pens from paper-based systems.
  • Kill line carcass processing robot control based on customer requirements or processing issues.
  • The use user defines carcass rules that allow carcasses to be managed before grading for increased kill line efficiency.
  • RFID gambrel tracking ensures carcasses are processed accurately and efficiently. Carcases can be directed automatically to retain/detail rails based on carcase faults, traceability is guaranteed and by automating sorting into the chillers, boning rooms can run more efficiently.
  • Chiller sortation rules that maximise chiller efficiency and automate the put-away process.
  • Carcase cutting and put away based on rules generated from the kill data reducing the labour required for cutting and storage. With information being passed to carcasses quartering or portioning system and the resulting portions being directed to the correct locations for boning or dispatch, manual sorting and pushing of carcasses can be removed.
  • The determination of the correct product code for an item based on its actual fat score reducing CL issues and customer claims.
  • Automated weighing and labelling of cartons and crates reducing labour and ensuring the consistency of barcode placement for subsequent scanning.
  • Automated carton sorting to reduce labour in manual carton handling.

Emydex Business Intelligence Reporting (BI)

Information is only useful if it is timely, relevant and easy to understand. This is where the new Emydex BI Reporting tool excels. This module allows end-users to extract data not only from the Emydex system but also from third party system and presents the information in a way that is meaningful, timely and clear. Reports can be run from a Web browser or back-office client allowing information to be available for all authorised staff anywhere in the world at any time.

Given the BI tool can report on any information in the Emydex MES and the DCI directly, it can display production information such as throughput speeds, real-time giveaway, production yields, grading scores, contaminant rates etc. and highlight to the Production team if an issue arises.

Information is also available from the sales, kill line payments, inventory, quality management and purchasing module, in fact, any area of the Emydex system. This allows users to generate their own sales analysis, livestock performance, inventory holding reports etc. and to display information in a way that is meaningful to them.

Reports can be automatically generated and published on a schedule allowing management to receive a summarised report of the day's activities based on key performance indicators with alerts to allow for the identification and correction of issues before the next day.

Summary.

With the integration of the production floor into the Emydex MES and the ability to control and report on production processes in high-speed environments, the Emydex MES has reached a class-leading status. Combined with the Emydex BI Reporting tool, production processes and any associated activities can be reported upon and managed real-time reducing reworks and loss.

For example, by reporting on contamination on a kill line or increased give-away on a high speed labelling line, changes can be made in the production environment to correct these to lessen the impact on the current production. This, combined with the reduction in labour and increased efficiencies in conjunction with the well-established ease of use and flexibility of the Emydex system mean existing Emydex user can gain immediate advantage from the introduction of these modules.

New customer will find the Emydex MES an extremely powerful solution for the management of their food processing environment.

Share the results easily with the ability to export the entire dashboard results, or an individual widget at the press of a button.

Individual dashboards can be set up with automatic refresh rates, meaning your data is always up to date!

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, South Africa or North America offices

Request a Demo

Filed Under: Africa, Australasia, Company News, Europe, Industry News, Markets, North America, Product News, Software

Growth in 2020 despite Covid-19

27th November 2020

Emydex expands in 2020 despite Covid-19 with year-on-year growth in sales

New office openings in Canada and New Zealand. New hires in Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. New customer signings and new plant go-lives.

Sales Growth

In a year dominated by the Covid 19 pandemic, global lockdowns, as well as restrictions on domestic and international travel, 2020 has seen another period of solid performance by Emydex, at a time when all staff in all market offices are working from home since mid-March.

In the first 9 months of 2020, Emydex recorded sales growth of over 10% compared with the same 9-month period last year. Emydex is pleased to see the business continue to grow throughout what are extremely challenging trading conditions.

Remote Working

Restrictions on the international movement of people have had the biggest impact on Emydex this year, with our customers and staff restricted in their ability to visit factories for business analysis engagements and project implementations in person.

South Africa

In September, Steynsburg Pork, a new Emydex customer, went live with the first phase of their Emydex system installation, at their new greenfield plant in South Africa. This new world-class farm and abattoir facility will process up to 4,800 sows per week once operating at full capacity.

Phase 1 of the project saw Emydex go-live with a “door to door” solution, including animal delivery, pig processing kill line, carcass management, into boning, case labelling, warehouse management and sales order picking.

The project was supported on-site by Emydex’s long-standing partner for the African market, Summit Process Solutions, and a special thanks to both Rodney and Jeffrey Macer-Wright for their help and assistance on the ground during the lead up to go-live, and several weeks post-go-live during the project stabilisation phase.

New Zealand

Around the same time, the Wilson Hellaby Group in North Island New Zealand went live with their first Emydex system, a state-of-the-art automated carton labelling system operating in the pack-off area of their beef and lamb boning halls of their Auckland Meat Processors (AMP) plant.

Unmanned labelling stations provide higher quality and consistency of labelling, eliminating errors, reducing reworks and recalls, whilst also reducing labour costs. Improvements in line speed and throughput mean that the automated pack labelling lines can process up to 18 cartons per minute. The system is fully integrated into the boning halls and provides real-time visibility of all stages of the production process for full traceability.

Emydex acknowledges the efforts of Ian Carson, Senior Consultant with Emydex Australia in our Brisbane office, who flew from Brisbane to Auckland and back during the lockdowns in both countries to support the Emydex go-live in the group’s Auckland Meat Processors (AMP) plant in Auckland.

Whilst onsite in AMP, Ian provided the eyes and ears for our system solutions and engineering teams working remotely on the project in our Dublin and Brisbane offices, relaying real-time video footage back to the engineers and testers working on the Emydex system solution on pre-go-live testing. Ian had to self-isolate for 2 weeks on both sides of the trip, going above and beyond the call of duty.

Canada

In Canada, the Emydex team have been working remotely with the Canadian Fishing Company (CANFISCO) to continue implementing Emydex functionality into the organisation remotely.

Having completed the first phase implementation covering Groundfish applications, the focus is now on applications for future improvements, including analysis of expected costs against actual costs, gross margin visibility at the different levels (including vessel, customer, and sales order analysis), as well as the automation of HACCP and QC processes and cold storage invoicing.

In addition, Emydex have also been completing requirements analysis for another multi-plant, major food manufacturing company in Canada. Although the first two factory requirements gathering visits were completed in person, the remaining factories have since been completed virtually using video conference technology again due to travel restrictions.

Expansion

To support growth in our two newest overseas markets, Emydex incorporated two new overseas companies in Canada and New Zealand in November and welcomed new hires to join both teams.

In Canada, Nathan Kelman joins the Emydex Canada team as a Senior Solutions Engineer. With over 8 years of programming experience working in software development roles around the Greater Toronto Area, Nathan will work on Emydex solutions development as well as support with our customers in Canada and the US

In New Zealand, Hermien Van den Berg joined the Emydex New Zealand team in September, as a Senior Project Manager, based in Auckland. With over 10 years’ experience working as a project manager for companies such as Coca-Cola in South Africa, Hermien will manage our growing New Zealand team, working remotely on customer projects including WHL and Silver Fern Farms.

(Jan 2021 update) Vadim Shegay and Wayne McRae also join the growing Emydex NZ team, both as a Senior Solutions Engineers working on ongoing Emydex projects spread over the North and South Islands in New Zealand.

Contact Sales in any of our Dublin, Brisbane, South Africa or Toronto offices

Request a Demo

Filed Under: Australasia, Awards, Company News, Company Updates, Industry News, North America, Press/Media, Product News

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