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Coldstore Management systems for 3 South African Customers

Following on from previous successful implementations in Southern Africa, together with Summit Process Solutions, Emydex has rolled out three additional cold store projects for three new customers in South Africa.  These include the Emydex Cold Store Warehouse Management System to QK Cold Store South Africa, located in Johannesburg, as well as to Table Bay Cold Storage and GPS Food Group RSA, both located in Cape Town. Over the past 18 months, the Emydex development team have added new functionality to the Cold Store module such as a Web Client, Stock Maps and EDI Integration.

QK Cold Stores

QK Cold Store SA offers a wide range of solutions from case picking to blast freezing, tempering, re-palletising and container loading on the deck, as well as offering a primary transport solution.

QK Cold Store SA had a requirement for a Full Warehouse Management System, capable of covering their four operational warehouses.

In phase one, Emydex implemented its Warehouse and Production Management modules, providing QK SA with a full solution from intake right through to dispatch. The project went live in October 2017, streamlining its operational processes. They now have functionality for operators to use handheld scanners to catch all movements of stock in real-time, allowing them to track all stock in their Cold Stores.

Further phases are scheduled for 2019 and will include integrating with customers’ systems, through EDI functionality, giving customers more visibility over stock sent to QK, stock being held in the Cold Store and stock that has been dispatched, in real-time.

GPS Food Group RSA

GPS Food Group provides sales, marketing, and stock control services from the UK for the sale of BMC, MeatCo and additional customer products in Europe.

GPS Food Group UK, an existing Emydex client, acquired a facility in Cape Town, with plans to build a Cold Store and later extend to a Value-Added Processing Plant.  GPS approached Emydex in 2017 to advise of the project requirements which were to be broken into two phases.

Phase one of the project kicked off with Cold Store functionality including stock intake, SDA Warehouse functionality, Dispatch and Client Invoicing. Later in the year phase two began, implementing the Emydex Production and Traceability reporting modules which covers their Value-Added processing operations in the same plant. This included adding functionality to cover 3rd party raw materials intake, de-boxing, de-frosting, processing, ingredients dispensing, recipe formulation, tumbling & injecting, cooking, packing, order picking and dispatch, all with full product traceability and yield monitoring.

Web Client – Distribution Warehouse System

Emydex, in conjunction with cold store customers in Southern Africa, developed a web interface that links directly to the Emydex customer database.

As a part of the DWS application, customers will be able to create Advance Shipping Notes (ASN) remotely. These ASN’s are then able to be allocated to a purchase order and will help to eliminate human error and increase the efficiency of the intake process at the Cold Store.

Additionally, their customers will also be able to create dispatch orders remotely, enabling them to create work orders, directing the cold stores to dispatch products. These work orders specify which product, how many, when and what destination the product is to go to.

As well as this, their customers can drill down into their stock that is on-site, enabling them to look at quantity of product(s) they have, batch numbers and other relevant traceability information. Emydex will also be implementing functionality to allow their customers to put product onto Quality Control hold, meaning that when a recall occurs product can be put on hold instantly and remotely as required.

Stock Maps

Some of the Cold Store systems delivered also include the latest version of Emydex’s Stock Maps functionality, enabling Cold Stores to view and search against a visual representation of their stocks, by drilling down through areas and warehouse locations, and interrogating stock via graphical views of racks, rows and bays. This latest version of Emydex Stock Maps system enables Emydex customers to configure, build and maintain Stock Map views themselves in-house via an easy-to-use Stock Map configuration editor. This allows the virtual representation of the cold store to be able to mimic the physical layout of the customers actual warehouse.

EDI Integration

Customer files containing high levels of detail of stock sent to the cold stores, are imported into Emydex, in order to let managers, see purchase orders, inventory levels and product details such as quantity and weight coming into the Cold Stores. Operators can validate that they’ve received the correct stock using handheld scanners, which feeds the information back into Emydex, speeding up the process of data exchange and eliminating the need for paperwork or phone calls.

Summit Process Solutions Hardware & Aftersales Support

Together with SPS’ industrial waterproof hardware such as the reliable PT9000 – 17” Touch Screen Waterproof Shop Floor Computer and Industrial Stainless-Steel Smart Scales, integration is seamless and simplifies while speeding up operations to our customers’ maximum benefit.  SPS have been a loyal partner when it comes to supplying either – hardware, training of customers, aftersales service or supplying of relevant information, to Emydex and its customers and always puts service first.

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Emydex South Africa Market Update

Over the course of 2018 the Emydex Technology delivery team in Dublin worked in close partnership with Summit Process Solutions, Emydex’s local market agent based in Johannesburg, to successfully deliver three new cold store projects for three new customers based in South Africa. These included the Emydex Cold Store Warehouse Management System complete with required hardware to QK Cold Store South Africa located in Johannesburg, as well as to Table Bay Cold Storage located in Cape town.

A third Emydex system was commissioned for GPS Food Group RSA, also located in Cape Town. The GPS Food Group Cold Store implementation was extended later in 2018 to add further Emydex Production and Traceability reporting modules covering their Value-Added processing operations in the same plant.

The addition of these three new customers, bring the number of Emydex customers to nine in the Southern Africa region.

Stock Maps

Some of the Cold Store Systems delivered include the latest version of Emydex’s Stock Maps functionality. This new functionality enables the Cold Store to view and search against a visual representation of their stock by drilling down through areas and warehouse locations and interrogating stock via graphical views of racks, rows and bays. This latest version of Emydex Stock Maps System now enables Emydex customers to configure, build and maintain Stock Map views themselves in-house via the easy-to-use Stock Map configuration editor.

Distributed Warehouse System

The Emydex Web Application development team in Dublin is nearing completion of a brand-new Distributed Warehouse System (DWS).  DWS is a web-based application for Cold Stores to provide remote access to their customers to run self-service queries on their stock, send ASNs and even Sales Orders via the web client to the Cold Store for action.

Other customers include Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco), the largest beef processing operation in Namibia.  Meatco is running Emydex in several of their processing, slaughter, de-boning and further processing plants, as well as a mobile Abattoir operating in the Northern Namibian region.

In addition, the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) is similarly the largest beef processing operation in Botswana and operates with Emydex’s Packing & Processing software modules at its three processing facilities in Lobatse, Francistown and Maun.

In South Africa, Klein Karoo Meat - the world’s largest Ostrich processor is situated along the garden route between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.  Klein Karoo Meat make use of Emydex’s Shop Floor, Production Control and Traceability Reporting Systems which are running in their three slaughter and de-boning plants based in Oudtshoorn, Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet.

16 Plants Operating Emydex Software in Southern Africa

In total there are now sixteen separate plants operating Emydex Software in Southern Africa, the bulk of which were delivered in partnership with Summit Process Solutions.  Summit Process Solutions integrates weighing, labelling, inspection, processing, data capture, factory floor software and IT systems to create tailor made solutions for companies in Southern Africa.  Combined with their vast range of industrial equipment like waterproof - computer terminals, scanners, scales, printers etc., they are a perfect match for Emydex’s Software Systems.

Commenting on the Emydex’s success in the region, David McMahon, Emydex CEO based in Dublin said “the success of Emydex in Southern Africa is very much dependent on our local partner Summit Process Solutions.  Not only do they supply, install and support all the industrial waterproof hardware required to run the Emydex Systems, but their professional services team assist with the planning, scoping and gathering of specifications required before the Emydex System is configured by the Emydex Dublin team.  When the time comes for system testing and go-live, Summit are again on hand to assist with preparations for go-live including testing, training and support.  It’s an ideal partnership where each side provide complementary products, services and skills. The Summit team’s twenty plus years of operating in the African region means they have the domain knowledge and expertise needed to have meaningful discussions with both customers and prospective customers alike.”

Rodney Macer-Wright, Summit Process Solutions Managing Director said “In the Southern African market, Emydex offers a perfect software package for our customers as they can offer a complete solution from raw material intake right through to finished product despatch or a standalone system such as the Emydex Quality Management System.

In a changing market such as ours, it is extremely important that a factory floor software keeps up with current trends. With Emydex’s focus being their factory floor software, they are continuously making improvements. They understand the customer’s requirements and are extremely agile in making changes and improvements to the Emydex software solution in order to streamline the customer’s production process. The partnership between Emydex and Summit Process Solutions offers our customers a proven solution with a great match of software and hardware”

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Harvey Beef live with Emydex in Western Australia

In operation since 1919, Harvey Beef is located in the town of Harvey, south of Perth in Western Australia. Part of Harvest Road Group and privately owned by the Minderoo Group, Harvey Beef is Western Australia’s leading beef processor. Stretching across 1.2 million hectares of pastoral farmland, Minderoo cattle stations are dedicated to producing high quality beef for both domestic and export consumption.

Harvey Beef were previously using a legacy factory floor software system comprising a number of software modules including data capture, labelling and 3rd party barcode scanning, that were integrated to their back-office Microsoft Dynamics Nav ERP system.

Full end-to-end Factory Floor Processing System

Due to the aging of the current system, difficulty of upgrading, and rapid growth within the business, a review was undertaken to determine the best course regarding their future IT systems, whether to upgrade or invest in a new system. Opting for the latter option Harvest Road, in December 2017, invited Emydex to submit a proposal to supply and implement a software system which would improve their ability to address their current issues and support growth plans. After the publication and evaluation of an RFP, and a competitive tender process, Emydex was selected to provide the full end to end factory floor processing system, in tandem with Empired being selected to implement Nav 2018 as their choice of back-office ERP system to cater for Harvest Road’s core financials and non-meat inventories.

The key objective of the project was to deliver an integrated system where data is entered only once, with users having access to real time, accurate inventory. Visibility of information across the organisation, along with visibility of stock produced to orders and availability of stock for dispatch, were all key requirements. The system also needed to be able to support new and changing business requirements, increase productivity, reduce inefficiency, and facilitate options for automation and cost savings.

Front row (L-R) - Ian Carson, Emydex Australia, Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, & Wayne Shaw, General Manager Harvey Beef, signing contracts. Back row (L-R) Kevin Sherry Executive Director Enterprise Ireland and David Eccles, Director Enterprise Ireland A/NZ, were present in Australia for the signing.

The project schedule was spread over five separate phases covering Cattle Processing Line and Payments, Boning Hall and Finger Scanning, Warehouse Management and Nav Integration, Retail Ready and Production Planning.

Kill Line and Payments

Phase one went live in June 2018 and comprised Kill Line and Payments including Livestock Delivery. This automated process allows livestock to enter through an RFID gate and to be scanned into the Emydex kill line system. NVD (National Vendor Declaration) details are recorded and links lot details to appointments, providing traceability and consistency of data from appointments through to grading and payments.

Commenting soon after the kill line go-live in June 2018, Wayne Shaw, General Manager of Harvey Beef said “I think we can say the kill line go-live went pretty well. On week 1, we achieved within 100 head of our maximum capacity which is a good effort for a change this big. The staff are very positive with the result. Everyone can see it is a better system. By weeks end the system was having no negative impact on throughput speed with the kill line system operating at speed, and operators up to speed with using it. Overall a great outcome.”

Boning Hall System

Work on Phase two of the Emydex project commenced soon after, with a subsequent go-live in September 2018, that consisted of Boning Hall, covering Carcass Management and Packing & Processing.  As part of this implementation phase BRI (Boning Room Input) delivers better control over which carcases go into each Boning Work Order (WO). The WO has a set of Rules each carcass must adhere to to be eligible for the Work Order. This gives more control to the planner on what is required for the Work Order.

Warehouse Management and Dispatch

Most recently Phase three of the project, the largest phase of functionality delivered to date, went live in January 2019 and included Warehouse Management, Dispatch as well as Dynamics Nav 2018 Integration. This project phase also delivered intake of third-party raw materials, transfer between internal entities in Harvest Road, transfer out to Cold Stores, and the ability for the Cold Store to dispatch on behalf of Harvest Road. It also included BSM (Buy, Sell, Move) integration, reducing manual entry for producing export documentation.

Commenting on the Phase 3 Go-Live,Wayne Shaw from Harvest Road said  “The feedback has been positive. The rollout has gone better than expected, and I have had a lot of positive comments about functionality being really good. BSM Integration is saving a lot of time that previously was spent manually entering information into BSM, so the integration back and forth between the two systems has saved a lot of time and is a real plus. The scanning inventory in real-time has meant that stocks are correct, which is also saving on average, four hours a day. The feedback on the sales functionality is very positive, with users saying it has exceeded expectations. So well done. The team has done a great job.”

Upcoming Phases

The next phase of the Emydex project beginning shortly, is Retail Ready, which will see the Emydex Retail Packing Software module being implemented. This will be followed by the final phase, Production Planning, which will begin later in the year.

Commenting on the project phases delivered to date, Lorna Daly, Head of Emydex Australia operations said “Following the Emydex roll-outs over the course of 2018 and early 2019, Harvest Road today have a robust end-to-end Factory Floor data capture system that delivers data on-time and accurately. They have more control over data going through the kill line as data is consistent between appointments, delivery and graded information. Real time data for inventory, yields and market pricing, allows for better decision making and view of stock coming close to being out of date. This has led to increased confidence in key metrics, such as stock on hand. Staff now have a modern system and direct access to data, meaning Traceability reports are easy and quick to run.”

 

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Emydex North America Market Update

Emydex Technology, a Dublin company specialising in Traceability Software for the food processing industry, have secured its third customer in the North American market. This contract brings to 120 the number of processing plants using Emydex software worldwide, in 14 countries. The company secured its first North American contract in Canada two years ago with pork processor Donald’s Fine Foods and has since closed a deal with Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco).

Emydex was established in 2004 by co-founders James Grennan and Redmond Burke to offer fish and pork producers and food processors an integrated production management system tailored to their needs.

Now led by chief executive David McMahon, Emydex employs more than 50 people at its Dublin headquarters and overseas offices in Canada, Australia and South Africa. The company’s factory- floor software is aimed primarily at large-scale processors. The software combines production control with traceability and quality reporting, yield analysis, stock and food safety management.

“We’ve now moved into the Saas (software as a service) space,” said McMahon.

“We are very focused on our three export markets: Africa, Australia and North America.

“We have spent 12 years developing solutions for 60 customers, with 120 plants around the world, and the question then became ‘what else do they need from us?’.

“We’ve spent the last two years building an online quality management system and that’s been really successful. We then went back to our customers with ten other products we were thinking of building and asked them ‘how interested are you?’.

“They came back and offered to help us with design and testing. So, we’re now working on three new products, two of which are Saas, for group production planning group animal payments and Factory of the Future.”

An export-led company, Emydex has customers in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Namibia. The firm targets countries with strong meat exports, a relatively low concentration of large-scale processors and a strong regulatory framework for food traceability.

Emydex is a client company of state agency Enterprise Ireland. “They have helped us with R&D grants for new product development and internationalisation grants to help market entry into our key new markets,” said McMahon.

Written by Elaine O’Regan – Sunday Business Post

The Business Post

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Electronic Quality Management Systems for the Food Industry

Quality Management Systems (QMS) are essential in each sector of the Food Industry, to ensure safe, quality food for the consumer. Food Safety and Quality audits are commonly used across the food industry to evaluate management systems, obtain certification from certain food and quality standards, assess the conditions of premises and products, and so on.

More and more Food Processing Plants are adopting Electronic Quality Management Systems to enhance their competitiveness on the global market and in response to growing pressure for consistent product quality, as well as the need for companies to demonstrate their quality management practices in order to meet the requirements of both legislation and the quality assurance practices of their customers.

After two years of continuous development and testing with significant input and validation from some of our largest food processing customer, Emydex in April 2018 released their Version 5 Electronic Quality Management System for Meat, Fish and Food Processors. The new Emydex EQMS stores all quality data in one centralised location, whether hosted in the cloud or installed locally on premise, depending on customer preferences.

The system provides Quality and Technical managers with accurate and holistic view of all Quality metrics and performance data as it happens in real-time across the organisation.

One core feature of the system is the ability to build and run in-house configured Quality checks and audits (workflows). By ‘in-house’ we mean QC workflows designed and built by QC staff, not the organisation’s in-house IT department. QC workflows are a series of Quality checks, questions and processes all wrapped into one.

The workflow builder offers QC users the ability to add conditional pathways, whereby the following questions presented are based on previous answers received from the operator i.e., if answer is A then 1, if B then 2. It also offers the ability to raise and track completion of follow up actions arising during audits and quality checks via email notifications. Any quality workflow in the system can be allowed to run at any time or can operate to a pre-defined schedule e.g., a pre-operation check, post-operation check or interval production check every two hours.

There are a number of major benefits arising from creating and assigning pre-defined schedules to QC workflows, including allowing management to identify when a QC workflow was:

  1. Missed
  2. Not started or completed on-time
  3. Completed in a time much faster than the average taken by other QC users, indicating that perhaps the survey was completed without adequate care and attention.

There are no hiding places in summary. The system also provides users with the option to indicate the reason why the check was missed, and automatically triggers follow up actions.

The Emydex EQMS provides the ability to create an electronic view (‘grid view’) for QC operators and managers to review and analyse QC data captured on the plant floor in detail. It also provides the option to generate in-house designed formatted reports that can be saved as a PDF, printed or sent to 3rd Parties, Auditors or emailed internally.

Additionally the system includes a fully functional document management and version control system, meaning documents can be uploaded to the EQMS system and readily made available to users as they complete workflows eg. retrieving details of a product spec during a product check and comparing the product on the line to the image in the documented product specification.

All documents and workflows can be managed via version control. This allows the back-office users to ‘check-out’ documents and workflows to make changes without affecting the Quality operation on the floor. Once they are happy with the changes, they can submit the document or workflow for approval and once approved, it becomes the active version on the floor.

For any Food processors that have already implemented the Emydex Production control and Traceability reporting modules the factory floor, a major advantage of the Electronic Quality Management System, can run the EQMS in tandem with their Emydex production system giving the ability scan product bar-codes, retrieve traceability details from Emydex’s production system database, and perform validation from the Electronic Quality Management System against production data stored in their Emydex Production system, something not possible with independent 3rd party QC systems.

The system incorporates both photographic as well as video evidence data capture.

To date the EQMS system has been implemented in numerous meat, fish and food processing plants, with both existing as well as new Emydex customers in Ireland, UK, Namibia and Australia with processors including Dawn Meats Group, Kepak Group, MeatCo Namibia as well as Dawnfresh Seafoods in Scotland. Dawnfresh currently operate the system on over 30 factory floor QC tablets spread over their two production facilities in Uddingston and Arbroath in Scotland.

A summary of some of the main features included in the system is below. If you are interested in an on-line demonstration or running a one-month free trial, please contact Shane Hayes, Emydex Technical Sales Manager on +353 1 8855990 or email shane.hayes@emydex.com

EMYDEX QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM DEMO VIDEO

Summary features include:

Production Calendars and Schedules

  • Create calendars to keep track of scheduling
  • Define operating hours/days
  • Specify hourly, daily, weekly & monthly workflows
  • Checks to be completed pre, post or during production
  • Missed workflow notifications – automatically notify when a workflow is missing or not completed

Schedule Workflows

  • Schedule Workflows with a click of a button. Apply zero, one or many schedules to a workflow as required

Roles & Responsibilities

  • Assign QC Workflows only to those responsible for them.
  • Assign Actions only to those with authority to complete them.
  • Email notifications for assigned actions.

CAPA + RCA + PM Faults

  • Construct your own Corrective/Preventative Action path to ensure you collate all data against the record that was non-conforming

Document Management Storage

  • Upload, store and maintain your documents within the system. access these documents during your workflows on the production floor
  • Procedures documents can be shared / accessed across multiple sites / plants

Version and Revision Control

  • Build your various version and revision control for all documents and workflows. Know who changed what, when and why.

Organisational Set-Up

  • Setup the company’s organisational structure within the system to control user access.

 

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Kill Line Live in Central Agri Group, Victoria, Australia

In 2016 Central Agri Group, formerly Central Meat Exports, re-opened their newly refurbished beef plant in Trafalgar as Victoria Valley Meat Exports. This is a state of the art, fully integrated, beef processing plant in Victoria, Australia. As part of the Central Agri Group of companies, VVME is focused on major export markets including the Middle East and South East Asia.

Having been in operation for several months, it was determined that the current systems did not meet the needs of this modern, export focussed business, as the various modules were not integrated and lacked the features found in a modern, integrated system. Processes such as interfacing to the NLIS database, preparing the kill agenda, generating payments and reporting were all complicated and in some cases completely manual.

In light of these requirements, VVME contacted Emydex with a view to replacing their existing system, starting with the slaughter floor and then moving on to the boning hall including stations for into-boning, offal packing and carcass dispatch, with carton dispatch to follow.

 

Kill Line Software

The kill floor went live recently with Emydex’s kill line software systems running on four on-floor data capture computers starting from an NLIS scanning station that checks the animal status in real -time against the NLIS database through to Dentition, Carcass defect and Weigh-Grading stations.

The Emydex back-office system allows for the kill agenda to be generated from bookings made earlier, many of which are themselves created by a direct import of the XML ‘purchase advice’ from the various sale-yards, with all associated costs and individual animal RFID details attached.

Data from the slaughter floor is approved, which then generates a payment invoice (recipient created tax invoice) to the supplier with very little manual manipulation using flexible payment grids. The kill data is loaded directly from Emydex to the NLIS database again streamlining the processes and adding efficiencies.

 

Electronic Quality Management System

With the slaughter floor fully live, the company is now moving ahead to implement the next phases over the next few months. The final step will be to incorporate the Emydex ‘Quality Management’ system which will integrate the Production processes with a Quality system which, being Cloud based, could potentially be expanded to include Central Agri Groups other processing facilities in other locations.

Commenting shortly after the initial Emydex system go-live at the plant, Colin Reidy, IT and QA Manager for the Central Agri Group stated:

“To be honest, that was the smoothest rollout I have ever been involved in. Even if you take the minor changes performed today, the system worked as intended with little to no intervention.

Ian’s knowledge combined with Carl’s skills made the last few improvements today practical and worthwhile.

The operators all responded positively and actively engaged with both the Emydex team and the software system.

As for the office, I walked in at 5am as normal and 5 mins later I ran out of things to do. Normally I am hard pressed to have the agenda out by 6:15 let alone get any QA checks done. Then this afternoon, after a couple hours playing with the pricing we had the final feedbacks done by 2:30pm - a task that quite easily takes me to 6pm most nights.

So to say I’m happy is an understatement.”

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