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Forresters takes off

How a family business scaled up to become an industry powerhouse

When independent, family-owned business Forresters wanted to take the business to the next level, they turned to Emydex and we were with them every step of the way.

Meet the client

Established in 1972 and based in Cheshire, Forresters is one of the largest suppliers of cooked, raw and coated poultry in the United Kingdom. The company supplies retailers, food services, pub retailers, manufacturers and catering butchers with a variety of frozen and chilled branded and own label chicken products.

The opportunity

Forresters had the expertise, the market and the reputation to help them to take the business to the next level. The issue was with operations and one of the biggest hurdles was the fact that their existing production and billing systems were built in-house and not integrated to their back-office ERP system. In practical terms, the production lines couldn’t handle any more as they were currently configured.

Maintaining and updating the systems was costly with little support, resulting in an over-reliance on a few key individuals. In addition, Forrester’s was unable to report in real-time on their daily production, stocks, traceability, yields and costs.

What we did

Forresters managers and Emydex specialists worked closely together to work out how to blend the best technology with the company’s own expertise to create an operation that could upscale as needed. Forresters commissioned Emydex to develop a production management and traceability reporting system which would operate on the shop floor and in the back-office for data maintenance, analysis, trending and reporting.

We began with phase one which was the installation of our packing and processing module on a dozen shop floor weigh-price labelling packing terminals. The Emydex weighing and labelling software system for finished products features easy-to-use label design, compliant with all EU regulations.

With that up and running we moved on to phase two which covered the roll-out of a factory-wide solution that covered the entire line. It was designed to give full traceability from start to finish, from intake of the raw material by purchase order, defrosting, cooking, production work orders, marination, packing, analysis by retail line, full stock, yield and dispatch control and then on to Sage 200 accounts for invoicing.

Vision System

A part of the project which was not in the original scope was the introduction of a Keyence vision system and barcode reader, that we fully integrated into Forresters’ Emydex solution. The Emydex software communicates with the Keyence vision and barcode reader, automatically checking for the correct batch number, use by date, product code, label layout / structure and barcodes on packs as they move down the packing line. If they are as they should be, the system triggers the printing of the correct box label for the product, rather than requiring the operator to press a button to print it. If either the label or barcode is incorrect, the Emydex system lets the operator know. The benefits of this system include more accurate product labelling, with less errors and potential recalls.

The results

This system is now live on the factory floor, door-to-door including all of Forresters fixed weight lines. The biggest and most immediate benefit of the new Emydex system is the reduction of manual input which has eliminated the risk of human error. Packing is now fully automated and labels are printed automatically when the correct number and type of packs are in the box, saving time, resources and money.

Forresters now has complete visibility over their entire production management process. They are no longer reliant on key individuals to manage in-house systems and they have a full support team on hand should any issues arise.

Most importantly, the Emydex system provides management and supervisors with real-time and accurate reporting on factory stocks, production, as well full traceability reports.

Profitability is up, human error has been eliminated and the factory has scaled up as a direct result of the improvements in efficiency and production brought about by the Emydex solution.

Commenting shortly after go-live Heidi Dilliway-Nickson, Director with Forresters said “the Emydex system is very efficient, easy to operate and works well for us. The full traceability we have gained saves masses of time - what used to take the QA department days to analyse is now instant. Emydex never say they can’t do something: they’ll listen and go away and come back with an answer, they always find a way.”

John Acornley, Finance Manager with Forresters added “We packed over one million packs last week and we have thirteen production lines where we used to have two: the company has expanded massively, and we couldn’t have done it without the Emydex system in place. It helps us to drill into products and see what’s happening in real-time, following every chicken through every step and that means stock rotation is perfect, quality is perfect. That means we can see issues and potential problems and react before they have an impact. The savings in time and paperwork alone have made it all worthwhile and the traceability reporting is brilliant – we can make important decisions on the fly. QMS is coming soon and will replace the last troublesome bits of paperwork in the factory.”

What’s next?

Next comes the QMS system and rolling out the solution to the factory’s remaining multi-pack lines.

For more on Emydex’s Quality Management system, read:

 

Electronic Quality Management Systems for the Food Industry

 


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

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Rosie & Jim Value Added Poultry Processor live on Emydex

Dublin – Ireland:
Rosie and Jim was established in 1997 when award winning craft butcher, Jimmy McLoughlin established Quality First Ltd and began producing gourmet chicken products for supply to butcher shops and restaurants. Today the company produces a wide range of premium quality, ready-to-cook gluten free breaded and battered chicken products.  They also produce a variety of delicious filled wraps.  All products are available chilled or frozen.

Order Control

Rosie and Jim approached Emydex in 2016 with a view to implementing a factory-wide Production Control and Traceability Reporting IT system door-to-door. The company had no existing factory floor IT system in place, operating manual processes instead, which meant excessive recording of internal processes manually on paper, which was both laborious and time-consuming, and offered little by way of real-time production control and traceability reporting.

The company had no real insight into the quantity or value of their existing stocks, resulting in procurement planning issues. Unsure of what current stocks were available to fulfil production orders, often resulted in over-ordering of stock, and the holding of excess stock of raw materials, dry goods and ingredients on-site than was needed.

Recipe Formulation

Another issue Rosie and Jim faced from their manual process was knowing how much each production batch cost to produce. Without knowing the precise amount of raw materials and ingredients going into each production batch, and without knowing the exact value of that stock, it was impossible to accurately calculate profit/loss and production yields.

Emydex’s Recipe Formulation Software system means that now, every item is scanned and weighed into a production job in the correct quantities. The system allows Rosie & Jim to track and record every item right down to the smallest measurement that was used in a production job. By doing this, Emydex determines the value of items used in production batches, allowing the system to calculate the cost of each production batch.

Real-Time Traceability Reporting

At Intake, Emydex allocates an internal traceability number (ITN) to each batch of supplier goods received, and the goods are labelled with barcodes and stored. From this point forward, the goods are tracked and traced by factory operators using hand-held scanning terminals, throughout the different stages of production, up to the point of sales order picking and dispatch, This allows for real-time traceability reporting throughout the plant, both for forward trace reporting from suppliers to end-customers, as well as backwards.

Sage Integration

Prior to go-live, Emydex was tightly integrated with Rosie & Jim’s existing Sage 200 accounting system, with Purchase Orders and Sales Orders pulled down from stage, and well as production data sent back to Sage for invoicing of customers and supplier payments.

Go-live

“We started using Emydex on the floor in two separate stages. First, we launched Emydex on our breading line while still using test data. This included the recipe blending and packing. By the end of the first week most of the production team using the system were already comfortable with using it. You could visibly see them speeding up when going through the individual screens.  

We also started to receive goods in from Intake onto the system. This has been simplest of part of the implementation. We soon after went live proper on the 1st of April. We first implemented Emydex on our mixes & tortilla line and began to pick our sales orders via the hand-held scanners. Overall, I feel the project was a successful implementation, and the new system has been well received by our production team, operators and supervisors, better than I could have expected”.

Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

Production Reporting

Rosie and Jim now have a comprehensive reporting structure on all aspects of their production processes. The Emydex back-office reporting module provides the company with a number of different views over their cost/value figures including Real-time stock inventory and valuation, Production costing, Production costing variances, Product usage reports, production yield reports and product giveaway reports.

Emydex also worked with Rosie and Jim to develop additional reports such as Production & packing time efficiency reports and daily stock movement reports.

“From a reporting side, by the end of the first week, our production manager and I started to see proper results with regards to yields, packing volumes and stock control. I would like to thank the Emydex team as they really helped, not only with the actual development but also with suggesting practical solutions to suit our processes e.g. line-side management.”

further comments by Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

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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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Traceability Systems 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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Oliver Carty testimonial video

Emydex case study with Oliver Carty, a Pork and Bacon producer based in Athlone, Ireland. The video describes how Oliver Carty use Emydex’s Production Management software throughout their 2 further processing factories from door to door, covering Intake, Box packing, Order Picking (Scanning) and Dispatch.

The video also shows Oliver Carty’s use of Emydex’s back-office Client software to report on their Stocks, Yields and food Chain Traceability.

Oliver Carty Video

Emydex staff 2014
2014 Emydex Team

Highlight Comments on project

We wanted a model that worked completely from backdoor through to dispatch, a system that could give us data and ease of use was of key importance to us.”
Justin Lennon, Key Account Manager, Oliver Carty

“We work on any hardware therefore we were able to
re-use their existing hardware which saved them
a lot of cost.

From our perspective, Oliver Carty is a very progressive and innovative food processing company. We recognise their willingness to invest in technologies solutions to give them accurate reporting on their metrics that drive their business. So I view the relationship as a partnership rather than a traditional customer supplier relationship.”

Dave McMahon, CEO, Emydex

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Green Farm Foods live with Emydex

Since its foundation in 1991, Green Farm Foods have continuously expanded over the past two decades to meet growing demand for their food products. Today the company employs just over 100 people at a 4,000 sq. metre facility in Rathowen, Co. Westmeath in Ireland. Green Farm Foods specialise in the production of premium-cooked consumer foods for companies like Supervalu, Centra, Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Londis, Spar and Superquinn in Ireland.

Green Farm Foods growth plans included a requirement to utilise the latest technologies to allow for increased production capacity, higher standards and more innovative products. To help deliver this goal, Green Farm Foods contacted Emydex in April 2012 with a view to installing an Emydex Production Management system to capture, manage and report on production data across the plant from door to door.

Two project phases included replacing their AMPS warehousing intake and dispatch system in Phase 1 and later replacing their existing Scanvaegt Packing stations in Phase 2. The Emydex system is also integrated to their Pegasus Opera Financial System to synchronise master data files such as product, suppliers, customers, customer pricing and labelling, as well as to receive notification of all POs for pending goods to be received. Sales orders are currently keyed directly into the Emydex system.

“Similar to our other customers, Green Farm Foods had a few specific requirements we hadn’t previously built, that did not exist in our standard Packing and Processing module” said David McMahon, Emydex CEO. The Emydex Packing module incorporated two standard packing modules that include (1) box weighing and labelling followed by containerising/labelling at pallet level and (2) pack weighing and labelling followed by containerising at box level. Green Farm Foods had requirement for a 3rd variation of packing whereby it would be possible to pack multiple-products into a box, followed by box labelling. “Given the inherent flexibility of the Emydex system, we were able to code the changes for Green Farm Foods into their customer specific layer of business logic. Should other customers also look for similar functionality in the future, this feature may well end up as a standard feature of our Emydex Packing & Processing Module but this decision will very much depend on customer demand” added McMahon.

Another difference was that Emydex Dry Goods Intake functionality traditionally works over handheld scanners, whereas Bulk Intake took place over a fixed point terminal and scales. Green Farm Foods had a requirement to Intake both Dry and Bulk Goods on fixed point terminals, so again this was customised to suit their requirements exactly. “At this stage after 8 years of continuous product development, refinement and enhancement we pretty much have everything that any food processing customer could wish to look for, but if we don’t we can develop it quickly and easily given the flexible nature of the technology platform the Emydex system is built on”.

Commenting on the final phase of the project going live in August 2012, Robert Patton, Financial Controller with Green Farm Foods said “with Emydex we were able to replace our previous systems with minimal fuss and down-time, and with little requirement for operator retraining. Given Emydex is an open system we were able to reuse much of our existing hardware and were able to minimise the need to purchase any new hardware.”

“Green Farm Foods now have a fully functioning production management software system that covers all aspects of our production process within a single system. With Emydex we can create any number of warehouses and locations ourselves to track and control stock. We can Intake bulk, dry goods and packaging stock, we can build, break-down and rebuild pallets as required, we can scan stock from each and every stock location to any other location, we can issue To Production, issue From Production, Write-off and Dispatch stock. On the reporting side we now have the ability to run live Yield reports across various stages of our production process, in addition to the entire plant. Emydex were also able to implement their out-of-the-box stock reconciliation system without any fuss or difficulty”.

For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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