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Emydex Tour of Australia and New Zealand

A lot of ground was covered by Emydex in Australia and New Zealand over three weeks in February and March, visiting both customers and prospects in Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and North & South Islands in New Zealand

It was great for Emydex CEO David McMahon to finally (post covid) meet and get to know all our fifteen hard-working Emydex employees working around Perth, Brisbane, Auckland, and Christchurch.

Week 1 of the trip centred around Emydex customer meetings in Western Australia (Harvey Beef, WAMMCO), Victoria (O’Connor Beef, Central Agri group), Wagga Wagga (Junee Lamb), finishing up in Sydney on Friday for a series of meetings with prospective customers. This gave Emydex CEO David McMahon and Emydex GM for Australasia, Jeffrey Macer-Wright, some time on Saturday morning to take in some of the sights of Sydney via a running tour, before heading on to Auckland over the weekend.

 

A statue of Sir Thomas Mort in Sydney Harbour, founder of Emydex customer, Mort & Co
Centre: A statue of Sir Thomas Mort in Sydney Harbour, founder of Emydex customer, Mort & Co

 

Week 2 focussed on customer and prospect meetings in North and South Islands in New Zealand. In New Zealand, Jeffrey and David met up with Ian Carson, as well as five Emydex NZ employees working around Auckland on North Island, and Christchurch on the South Island. Emydex staff travelled from their WFH locations to attend deferred Emydex Christmas parties in Auckland and Christchurch.

Customer visits included Wilson Hellaby, North Island, as well as visiting Christchurch to see Emydex in action in the Silver Ferns Beef primal processing plant in Belfast. The latter half of the week was spent in Dunedin for a series of meetings in Silver Fern Farms head-office, as well as meetings with prospects, and a potential partner company, Scott Technology.

 

Left: Wilson Hellaby, Auckland. Centre: SFF, Belfast, Christchurch. Right: SFF HQ, Dunedin

Left: Wilson Hellaby, Auckland. Centre: SFF, Belfast, Christchurch. Right: SFF HQ, Dunedin

 

Week 3 was spent mainly in Queensland, Australia, where Emydex have an office supporting our ten staff in South Brisbane in the city centre. Customer meetings were held over two days, with Mort & Co at their head-office in Toowoomba, followed by a visit to see one of their feedlots in operation at Grassdale. In addition, a visit to see one of Mort & Cos supplier factories. Scheduling challenges meant the team had to settle for a virtual call with Emydex customer Sunpork, based in Eagle Farm, close-by to our Brisbane office. The remainder of the week included several prospective customer meetings in both Queensland and Victoria. The week ended with Birthday celebrations for long-serving Emydex employee Carl Brennan, a Lead Solutions Engineer with Emydex over 10 years, who last year permanently relocated with his family from Ireland to Brisbane.

 

Left: most of the Emydex Brisbane office team. Centre: Grassdale feedlot. Right: Carl Brennan

Left: most of the Emydex Brisbane office team. Centre: Grassdale feedlot. Right: Carl Brennan

 

Overall, the three-week trip included nine customer meetings, as well as nine prospective customer meetings, and culminated with a visit by Charlie McConalogue, Minister for Agriculture, Food & the Marine of Ireland, Jane Connolly, Ambassador of Ireland to New Zealand, and a delegation from Enterprise Ireland to see #emydex in action in the Silver Fern Farms Ltd primary beef processing plant in Belfast, Christchurch.

 

L-R: Dylan Marsh, STREAMLINE Lead, Silver Fern Farms; Mary Kinnane, APAC Director Enterprise Ireland; Brendan Gleeson, the Secretary General in the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer, Silver Fern Farms; Charlie McConalogue T.D, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine of Ireland; H.E. Jane Connolly, Ambassador of Ireland to New Zealand; Jeffrey Macer-Wright, General Manager, Emydex Australasia; Niall Casey, Enterprise Ireland

L-R: Dylan Marsh, STREAMLINE Lead, Silver Fern Farms; Mary Kinnane, APAC Director Enterprise Ireland; Brendan Gleeson, the Secretary-General in the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer, Silver Fern Farms; Charlie McConalogue T.D, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine of Ireland; H.E. Jane Connolly, Ambassador of Ireland to New Zealand; Jeffrey Macer-Wright, General Manager, Emydex Australasia; Niall Casey, Enterprise Ireland

 

Emydex’s Technical Director, James Grennan will travel out to Australia and New Zealand in May for a series of technical workshops with Emydex customers.

Both David and James will return to Australia in July when Emydex will be exhibiting at the foodpro trade show in Melbourne from 23-26 July

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Emydex Update from Down Under

Feb 2023

2023 is shaping up to be a busy year for Emydex in this part of the world (Australasia), with the roll-out of Beef & Pork processing systems in New Zealand, several animal payments systems, as well as a first-time implementation of an export sales management system for a large feed lotting customer in Australia

 

Beef Processing System

Emydex Team NZ is working with one of our group beef processing customers to roll out their ‘group standard’ Emydex slaughter floor solution, to all their other beef plants in New Zealand over the next nine months. In addition, a second Emydex team is busy commissioning an Emydex solution for their first secondary butchery (boning) room. To meet this ambitious target, our 15-person strong Emydex team working in New Zealand and Australia will support both projects.

Animal Payments System

Also, in the first quarter of this year, another Emydex meat processor in New Zealand will go live with an Emydex Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for their pork processing plant, as well as commission our newly updated Central Animal Payments System (CAPS). Being multi-species in its design, it will be possible to quickly roll out this Payments system to the other divisions within the company once the pork plant goes live.

Export Sales Management System

Crossing the Tasman Sea, in Australia Emydex will commission a new Export Sales Management and Central Animal Payments System (CAPS) for beef payments for a new Emydex customer in Queensland, which is Australia’s largest privately-owned beef cattle lot feeding company.  This new customer does not own any processing facilities directly, so their entire marketing and inventory management system is managed via data sent from third-party toll processors and logistics companies. The company expects to see a marked improvement in the efficiency of sales activities as well as providing visibility and traceability of their inventory from production plant to customer. Emydex will provide a strong and flexible platform to support the raid growth planned for this year.

Emerging Trends

Emydex are seeing more integration of labour-saving systems with the surfacing of data not traditionally made available to support the production staff processes. This includes data from items such as refrigeration, X-ray carcase grading systems, automated storage and retrieval units, stunning data on the kill floor, IoT devices etc. All of this is collected via a module known as the Data Communications Interface (DCI) module in the Emydex MES, and is integrated and used to support the manufacturing process and is surfaced by the MES via the inbuilt Emydex Business Intelligence (BI) reporting tool. This functionality supports the implementation of Industry 4.0 to provide a ‘whole of life’ view of the production process and to identify efficiencies and compliance issues within the production systems.

CEO Visit

Emydex Australasia is delighted to welcome our group CEO, David McMahon, back to these shores after an absence of several years due to Covid. Dave will be visiting existing customers in Western Australia, Victoria, NSW, and Queensland as well as North and South islands in New Zealand. In addition, meeting up with Emydex staff dotted across both countries, many working remotely from home, hired during the pandemic. Dave is also scheduled to meet several new companies interested in learning more about Emydex. If any readers of this newsletter are interested in learning more about Emydex or even catching up on some of the new directions and processes that are emerging in Europe, we would be more than happy to arrange a meeting whilst he is here. Please reach out to ian.carson@emydex.com. 

Lamb Processing System

As the year progresses, another Emydex customer will be moving into the implementation phase of their Emydex lamb processing system, rolling out to their two Australian-based sheep processing plants in WA and NSW. Other Emydex customers will continue to implement new modules to support their existing processes whether they be web portals for farmer livestock bookings and feedback, automated chiller sortation, integration to automated labelling systems or the integration of order and stock management functions in Emydex to automated storage and retrieval systems. All these projects will deliver considerable labour savings, which considering the current labour shortages in the industry, will bring rapid payback and efficiencies to those who are embarked upon these projects.

For any information on any of the projects outlined above, please email sales@emydex.com for more information.

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Emydex CEO Update – 2022 Review

Emydex CEO Update – 2022 Review

Looking back on 2022, last year continued with the trend of challenging global trade conditions with the War in Ukraine fuelling a global energy crisis and rapidly rising inflation.  Not much of a break in the weather post the Pandemic that overshadowed most of 2020 and 2021.

Despite these challenges, Emydex continued to grow and expand in 2022 with double-digit revenue growth over 2021.  The company continued to grow in our key overseas markets, with a team of over fifteen full-time employees now employed across our two subsidiary companies in Australia and New Zealand.

Project work continues at pace with our New Zealand customers, Silver Fern Farms, Wilson Hellaby, as well our newest customer in NZ, Open Ocean, an indigenous mussel processing factory in Opotiki, North Island.

Our Emydex team in Australia was boosted by the arrival of some highly experienced Emydex employees including Jeffrey Macer Wright (Emydex South Africa) as well as Carl Brennan (Emydex Ireland) who both permanently relocated with their families to Australia, to work out of our Emydex office, located in South Brisbane.

Jeffrey and the Emydex Australian team are busy working on system expansions and upgrades with several customers in Australia including Harvey Beef, Junee Lamb, as well as new customers Mort & Co and WAMMCO.

New product developments completed by Emydex Australia include a new Meat Messaging system, developed in conjunction with the Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC).  This new system enables Emydex customers to electronically send a list of GS1 labeled carton records (for export shipments, including export certifications) to a centralised cloud storage system, which virtually eliminates the potential for rejection of cartons due to port mark errors or omissions.

The Emydex team in North America has also grown on foot of some significant new customer wins, including a large multi-plant poultry processor with over ten primal and further processing plants spread across Canada.

Back home in Ireland, the Irish team are also busy on several large customer upgrades to our latest Version 6 software, as well as New Product Developments including:

Android Scanning (XDA)

A new Android-based Emydex application running on handheld scanners used for Warehousing functions including Stock management, Issue to production, QC Hold, Containerising, Palletising, Sales Order picking and Dispatch.  Feedback from early adopter customers includes “I have been so impressed with the new Emydex XDA.  The speed at which it works is fantastic even with the database being in the cloud” Operating on Android devices means Emydex customers can source devices, from a wide range of manufacturers, at a lower cost compared to previous Windows mobile devices.

Central Animal Payments (CAPS)

A complete rewrite of our widely used Animal kill line payment system.  CAPS provides the core ‘engine’ which is used to not only generate payments to livestock suppliers but also to those other entities involved in supplying livestock such as buyers, agents, and transport companies.  In addition to generating payments, the system can produce accounts receivable invoices for service processing allowing suppliers to be paid.

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Portal

A new web-based application that enables Emydex customers to manage their supplier audits over the web.  Suppliers securely log into an Emydex web portal to complete self-assessment questionnaires/assessments (SAQ), collect relevant documents, submit product specifications, and manage contacts.  The supply chain manager will be able to manage everything related to suppliers completing SAQs and managing their supplier’s approval status & risk rating.  As well as this, they will be able to receive notifications a view all information submitted by the supplier.

Other new products in the Pipeline for 2023 include further development of our new Enterprise Management System (EMS), a corporate-level suite of software applications targeted specifically at maintaining data integrity, reducing data entry, and improving control across multi-plant businesses.

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

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Turning over a new leaf in New Zealand

Turning Over A New Leaf In New Zealand

How Emydex helped the largest livestock processing company in New Zealand to replace a 25-year-old Abattoir system with a new state-of-the-art solution that worked so well, it’s planned to go into 13 other facilities. The pilot operation in Christchurch was originally scheduled for a three-week installation but was up and running in just four days. However, the conversation with Silver Fern Farms started over a decade ago, the tendering process was exhaustive, and preparation and simulation reached a whole new level of precision.

 

Meet The Client

Silver Fern Farms is the largest livestock processor in New Zealand with a 30% market share, 7,000 employees working across 14 plants and a turnover of NZ$ 2.7b. They represent 16,000 sheep, cattle, and deer farmers, exporting to 60 countries worldwide. The Silver Fern Farms headquarters is in the centre of Dunedin on the South Island.

Emydex has been working on a deal with Silver Fern Farms since 2010 which makes this the longest sales cycle in the company’s history. Over the course of the 10-year discussions, the Emydex team paid several visits to Silver Fern Farm’s head office in Dunedin, as well as beef processing plants across New Zealand, and various delegations from Silver Fern Farms travelled to Ireland to visit Emydex at their head office in Dublin, as well as Emydex customer plants in Ireland and the UK.

 

The Opportunity

In 2019, Silver Fern Farms informed Emdyex that they were ready to start a formal project to replace their ageing factory floor traceability and production control system systems. The pilot plant was to be their primal beef processing facility in Belfast, Christchurch which had been using the same system for 25 years.

As part of the formal tender process, Emydex pitched against two other international specialist firms, as well as a local supplier of MES software systems. The pitch process comprised a comprehensive selection process that included two days of presentations and meetings, involving demonstrations of nine scripted scenarios (traceability, packing, etc) over seven hours before thirty people from the Silver Fern Farm’s group, followed by a second day of meetings with their internal IT team as well as their engineering department. In the end, Emydex emerged as the preferred supplier and was awarded the contract for a beef primal processing pilot project in their Belfast plant in Christchurch.

 

What Emydex Did

The project was originally planned to go live in July 2020 when the Belfast plant traditionally closed for a 3-week period, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt. Due to the pandemic, the project was moved back by a year. During that time, the project scope expanded to include other technical aspects for delivery, for example, a whole new system for animal assembly.

The new Emydex system configured for Silver Fern Farm’s handles everything from the booking and intake of the animals and follows the flow through the factory floor including the stun station, live weight, head inspections, carcass inspections, reinspection, and grading. Everything meets the strictest New Zealand government veterinarian standards and procedures, and it all integrates with the existing CRS system for streamlined payment processing.

 

Emydex System In Use

 

Automation was a big part of the project, replacing the factory floor terminals with integration to their programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Each hook has an identification on the hook and the system collects information at every station along the line.

Automation like this is the main difference we see between the European and the Australian and New Zealand markets. The level of investment in automation is higher but it pays back in labour efficiencies – machines don’t catch COVID.

James Grennan, Technical Director, Emydex

 

Going Live

The project finally went live in November 2021 following a comprehensive testing and training schedule for all operatives that included simulations, dry runs, full monitoring of everything at all stages and then an Emydex team onsite. The client anticipated a three-week switchover, but the joint teams managed to complete the switchover in just four days.

 

Emydex On-Site Training

 

The Belfast plant operates two shifts, producing 20 hours a day which makes it a very busy plant. Emydex supports the plant at all times, 24x7, with a team of Emydex engineers spread across New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and Canada, following the sun.

 

From our support offices in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Canada we can follow the sun so that should anyone in Silver Fern Farms have an issue, they can call Emydex on just one number and there will be someone at their desk to take their call and, if it’s a critical issue, it’s a sequential line, downtime can cost thousands of dollars a minute. We can analyse and resolve immediately 24 hours a day with our four teams around the world.

Lorna Daly, Head of PMO, Emydex

 

Emydex today have a team of five people employed in New Zealand and ten in the Emdyex Australia office in Brisbane, supporting Silver Fern Farms as well as two other New Zealand food processing companies. This makes Emdyex the largest Irish employer of permanent staff in New Zealand, according to Enterprise Ireland, for whom Emdyex are a client company. In fact, the introduction of Emydex to Silver Ferns Farms originally came via Enterprise Ireland’s Australia office, through one of their market-office staff based in New Zealand.

 

Enterprise Ireland has been a huge help to Emdyex in Australia and New Zealand. The EI Australasia team are so supportive of Emydex and other Irish companies, it’s reassuring to know we have these local supports in place for whenever we need them

David McMahon, CEO, Emydex

 

The Results

As you would expect, the new Emydex system has brought new levels of efficiency and productivity to the Silver Fern Farms facility in Belfast, Christchurch. What is so impressive is that this was a very efficient and well-run operation even before we went near it but soon after go-live, Silver Fern Farms confirmed that they had processed more cattle in one shift than they had ever done before and finished earlier too.

 

The project went well. Emydex is a great system and the staff love using it. The system gives good information and reports, it is easy to use and works well. There are efficiencies in that all the data is in one area, and we no longer have to review or get reports in more than one system to get the information we want. Staff on the floor, as well as leaders and management, have benefitted the most when it comes to information and reports that the Emydex system can supply. Their engineers and technical people are very good; their project managers are very knowledgeable and able to keep us informed

Phillip William Kilgour, Plant Manager, Silver Fern Farms

 

Bringing all different systems into one system will have benefits. This means one system for our end-to-end site process - from livestock booking through to container load-out to the customer. Talking to some of the workers they like the new Emydex system and it has helped them

Shaun O’Neill, Regional Operations Manager, Silver Fern Farms

 

Feedback from Belfast has been very positive, and it’s great to have all site functions in one system as well as having timely access to important information for decision making.

Simon Limmer, CEO, Silver Fern Farms

 

What’s Next?

Based on the success of the pilot project, Silver Fern Farms have accelerated its plan to roll out Emydex to its 13 other processing plants spread across New Zealand. In 2022, the plan in Phase 2 is to tackle Production Scheduling, Packing, and Automatic Labelling along with the implementation of Emydex’s Enterprise Management System (EMS) for Master Data. The EMS system will be used to centrally manage data from the head office to individual plants. In conjunction with Phase 2, additional teams will make any adaptions needed to the existing Livestock processing system required to roll out to other bovine sites and then move on to the implementation of the ovine and venison systems.

 

In Other’s Words

In terms of their professionalism… as a meat processing company, Silver Ferns employ project managers, process managers, business analysts as well as internal QA testers. They installed their own Emydex training lab and ran the kill line with dry runs using big blue plastic barrels (blue cows) hanging from the hooks to simulate carcasses. This level of attention to detail was impressive to see. Emydex is a better company for the experience we had working with Silver Fern Farms.

David McMahon, CEO Emydex

 

One of the biggest and hopefully unique issues with this project was that our team members on the ground had to travel from outside NZ and so quarantine for two weeks in advance of the go live. There was a lottery for the MIQ quarantine places, and it was tough waiting for when the places opened. Even close to the go-live flight cancellations caused some issues with our team having to travel long hours by car. Due to COVID, Emydex has adapted to not having the full team onsite for the launch with team members working remotely. The team worked via video calls and cameras were installed to give a view of the factory floor. We had easy access to remotely control each terminal.

Shane Hayes, Product Manager, Emydex

 

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

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Success in a Greenshell

Success In A Greenshell

Whakatōhea is an indigenous New Zealand iwi (confederation of Māori tribes) centred around the small coastal town of Ōpōtiki in the Eastern Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand.

Over 20 years ago, Whakatōhea created the aspiration to develop a Greenshell™ Mussel aquaculture farm off the coastline of Ōpōtiki. The vision was that the farming operation would support the development of a mussel processing factory in Opotiki and be the foundation of employment for their people, provide income for whanau (family), and support improved outcomes for the entire community.

Open Ocean Greenshell™ Mussel Farm

Creating the world's first Open Ocean Greenshell™ Mussel Farm of such magnitude was no easy feat. The consent process took over 10 years of legislative change and resource consent approval, followed by a further 5 years of research and feasibility trials. When the venture needed capital to reach commercialization, the community came together – with both local Māori and Pakeha, businesses, families, and local trusts investing to enable the farming operation to further expand.

Today - with iwi support, national government contribution, and significant shareholder investment – the dream for Te Whakatōhea iwi and the local community is no longer just a dream; it is a living reality.

Te Whakatōhea Mussel Farm currently lies just over 8.5 km off the coastline of Ōpōtiki. The farm expands across over 3800 hectares of nutrient-rich, clear, and open ocean water space.

Mussel Processing Technology

Mussels are harvested daily from the farm and delivered directly to the Ōpōtiki Processing Facility. From there, mussels are immediately processed and freighted all over the world under the brand name Open Ocean.

Upon completion of the factory, the team at Whakatōhea Mussels realised that to provide a world-class product with traceability back to the farm, and even to the area of the farm where the mussels were harvested, no ordinary software package would do the job. After a worldwide search for a solution, Whakatōhea Mussels contacted Emydex. Emydex already had a fully functioning manufacturing execution system (MES) providing complete traceability in many seafood processing sites around the world.

Emydex Mussel Processing

Given the new processing facility was due to start processing in a few weeks, speed was of the essence. Within weeks the system was in place and ready to use. Being deployed in the Cloud meant no additional IT infrastructure was required at the plant with the existing touch screen terminals and scales easily integrated into the Emydex solution. Android-based barcode scanners connect seamlessly via the Internet to the Warehouse Management System's database allowing for the issuing and dispatching of stock from the plant.

The Emydex Process

Mussels are bought into the plant in large hessian bags of up to a tonne where they are weighed and labelled which is recorded in the system with the harvest information resulting in a clear view of the quantity and origin of raw materials on the plant. From here the mussels are issued to a production grading ‘job’ where they are scanned using a traceability barcode into the job linking to the original harvest number thereby providing traceability back to the farm.

From here the mussels are recorded out of grading as a work-in-progress product again using a traceability barcode to track the mussels through the process. Finally, they are issued to the packing process where they are recorded and labelled for shipment whilst still retaining the traceability from the farm to the finished items. The traceability is retained throughout the process by simply scanning the traceability barcode at each stage of the process.

Scott Fitzgerald, ICT Manager for Whakatōhea Mussels said of the implementation
The team at Emydex have done a great job, the documentation that was pulled together so quickly because our business needed a quick implementation was good, it is well-detailed and easy to follow. Emydex provided training for the admins and super users, all of which has been useful.

When asked after the go-live how he viewed the implementation Scott commented;

Very successful, being a greenfield site, we have been finding our way through the processes, not only with Emydex but as a business moving forward. Sometimes we knew what we wanted, other times we needed Emydex to be patient with us and help us to discover what we can and cannot do with the system. Emydex was great in helping us do this. Moving from the manual system to Emydex has already increased our productivity and will continue to do so.

And finally, how was the process overall?

In one word, great. Emydex has been easy to deal with and helped us to give our business the commercial push it needed regarding a production system.*

 

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

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Emydex MES for Poultry Processors

Emydex MES for Poultry Processors

After two lengthy and competitive sales cycles, competing against other international suppliers of MES solutions, Emydex recently signed two-tier 1 multi-plant poultry processing customers in Canada and Poland.

In conjunction with a leading international hardware provider to the poultry primary and secondary processing industries, Emdyex is taking this opportunity to upgrade and further expand on Emydex’s Poultry processing software solutions. These customers looked to Emydex with two separate requirements, Group MES consolidation and increased production with investments in expanding capacity and offering to their customers.

Primary Processing

Quite often we find that customers have several providers of hardware & equipment across the business, capturing valuable data but not being able to easily access this information leading to manual, delayed & inaccurate reporting. This in turn leads to production inefficiencies.

With the introduction of Emydex’s Automation layer to our Poultry Processing technology stack, Emydex is able to work with a multitude of international hardware and machine providers to capture and collate information from across the entire process into one central system.

Emydex will now be able to capture data covering Primary Processing, including Transportation, Live Bird Handling, Kill Line & Defeathering & Evisceration and continuing into Secondary Processing.

Using the Emydex Automation layer, we can collect and store information such as temperature, humidity, stunning, etc, against a lot which assists to provide confidence in Animal Welfare practices at the plant. As flocks travel along with the chain, we monitor and report on the performance of individual machines assisting with preventative maintenance as well as tying all the data collected along the chain together to determine the overall OEE

 

Secondary Processing

Emydex MES for Poultry Processors

Further expanding the Emydex Automation layer into secondary processing, we are able to capture various information depending on the machines that the customers choose to implement. Whether customers have manual grading devices or choose to implement camera-based grading devices, we will collect the grading information, as birds travel through the distribution system, we will monitor and display in near-real-time key metrics about the distribution of the birds to different drop-off points.

Once birds enter the Cut-Up and deboning machines Emydex will report on the planned vs actual production which allows customers to monitor orders for completion to ensure no over or under-production. Using the Emydex Packing & Processing module, we can collect the output weights of the process and report on expected vs actual yields.

Being able to provide a solution to connect machinery throughout the entire Poultry Primary Process and automatically streamline and surface valuable information such as animal welfare, product quality, production efficiency and OEE whilst maintaining door-to-door traceability is essential for our customers
Shane Hayes – Product Manager

 

Further Processing

In another Emydex Market, a major Canadian Poultry Processor has grown through acquisition and plans to continue its expansion but recognized that they need to implement standardized shop floor processes across all plants and provide centralized visibility of Inventory. Current shop floor solutions were from multiple vendors, with varying degrees of integration, from all manual to partial integration with their current ERP vendor.

The poultry processor plans to start the implementation with the further processing plants and then expand the project to their primary processing plants later. Emydex systems would take over control of a portion of the product flow and gradually add other areas over time. Initially, Emydex will be deployed to handle finished good labelling, order picking, inventory control, and integration to the client’s ERP and 3PL Cold Storage.

In the next phase, the system would be expanded to receiving and production intake of raw protein ingredients. In the final phase, the system would incorporate receiving and production intake of dry and wet ingredients.

The Emydex system's rollout will be a significant undertaking and will be a multi-phase, multi-year project. At the full completion of each plant rollout, the goal is to achieve the following stated project objectives:

  • Standardize one corporate MES/WMS solution that will evolve with technological improvement and support Poultry Processor across all divisions.
  • Eliminate targeted manual data entry processes with enhanced automated data integration
  • Provide the foundation systems to connect to other third-party systems i.e. In-line scanning and auto labellers, robotic palletization, etc
  • Provide system-based 2-way, door-to-door traceability
  • Provide production yield tracking and reporting
  • Provide a modern user interface and strong reporting tools
  • Utilize out-of-the-box enhanced functionality
  • Centralize control of Finished Goods Box and Pallet labels across all plants. This will ensure consistent labels across plants and reduced internal administration with centralised control.
  • Emydex Enterprise Management System will provide centralised control of master data to the varying plants and tight integration with the ERP and external cold storage vendors.
  • Emydex will provide control and visibility of inventory of Finished Goods, Raw Materials, Packaging and Ingredients at the lot and best before date level.
  • The initial implementation will capture basic production yield but over time they plan to implement Emydex’s more advanced yield, BOM and costing solutions.

Closing Statements

“In today’s competitive market with continued labour shortages, poultry companies need to leverage technology to be as efficient and productive as possible. The way to accomplish those goals is with consistent processes across plants and an integrated shop floor solution that provides timely data to manage and control the operation”
Terry McCorriston, NA Sales Agent

 

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

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