Careers Contact Downloads |

Food Processing Software Solutions

Australia

Home / Archives for Markets / Australia

Australia goes ‘green’ over Irish contracts worth $10m

More than $10 million in new Australian contracts including investments in ICT and emerging technologies - along with a new Melbourne office for Enterprise Ireland - has been announced as part of a Trade Mission from Ireland.

Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys - accompanied by 71 Irish companies from the fintech, medtech, high-tech construction, agritech, emerging technologies and ICT sectors - announced the deals.

“Australia is a mature and highly developed economy that offers significant opportunity for Irish exporters,” Humphreys said in announcing the deals.

“Despite the long distance to market, Australia’s open economy, significant infrastructure expenditure and strategic location at the doorstep of Asia has led many Irish companies to enter and perform strongly in the market. The size and scope of this trade mission demonstrate that now more than ever the importance of this marker.”Heather Humphreys -Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys -Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation

Humphreys said the deals - and the opening of the Melbourne office of Enterprise Ireland - are a direct result of continued growth in export to Australia and New Zealand from Ireland to the sum of $404 million last year - an increase of 43 per cent over the past three years.

On the technology front, the deals are as follows:

- Kingspan Insulated Panels announces a $8 million capex investment for a new state-of-the-art machine that will operate at its factory in Greater Western Sydney.

-Solgari and Barhead strike a deal to bring Solgari’s Dynamics 365 All-Channel Solution to Barhead Financial Service & Retail customers in Australia. The partnership gives Solgari access to Microsoft’s global partner network and millions of potential customers.

-Emydex announces a contract with Harvey Beef, the largest meat processing company in WA, to provide its food processing software.

-Eppione announces a contract to license oits software to HR consulting firm Talenting.

-Combilift announces a contract with E Store Logistics, which is set to become the second largest user of the Combilift Aisle Master product and largest private user across A/NZ.

Humphreys said 320 Irish companies are now exporting to Australia - companies that employ over 25,000 people in Ireland.

“Our ambition is to grow client exports to $574 million by 2020. I am delighted to lead this Trade and Investment Mission to Australia and engage in an extensive program of activity which focuses on supporting Irish companies to expand exports into this significant market," Humphreys said.

Article written by Jennifer O'Brien (CIO)

Request a Demo

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.”

 

Request a Demo

Emydex New Hires in Dublin, Australia & North America

In line with continued growth and expansion, mainly in overseas core markets, Emydex is pleased to announce new hires across the board, joining the Emydex Project Management, Development, EQMS and Customer Support teams over the past few months.

Project Managers

Ann-Marie Caffrey joined the Project Delivery Team in September 2018. Ann-Marie has a Degree in Information Technology from Dublin City University and previously worked for Hewlett Packard as Senior IT Project Manager.

Ciara McIvor joined the Project Management Team of Emydex Dublin in August 2018. Ciara has a Master’s Degree in Project Management and over 5 years project management experience.

Development Team

Robin O’Neill joined Solution Delivery Team in June 2018. Robin studied at the Universities of Glasgow and Leeds and has over 10 years Software Development experience in all aspects of the software development lifecycle.

Ekaterina Pushkina, joined the Solutions Delivery Team of Emydex Dublin in October 2018. Kate has a Master’s Degree and over 18 years Software Development experience.

Varun Kasana, joined the Products Division Team. Kasana has a Master’s in Computer Science and has over 8 years’ Development experience.

Jose Rubio joined the Development Team in January 2019. Jose has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and moved to Ireland in 2011, working as a Software Engineer since 2012, and as a Team Lead since 2016.

Rory McGarrigle joined the Development Team in January 2019. Rory is an experienced software developer with over eight years’ experience across a wide variety of technologies, delivering challenging projects.

EQMS Team

Agnieszka Kregiel-Grzyb joined Emydex as an intern whilst completing a Software Development trainee course. Previously she worked in customer service for 8 years and completed a Management course in DIT. Most recently Agnieszka completed a Higher Diploma in Science in Computing at NCI.

Brian Shortall joined Emydex as a member of the Product Delivery Team. Brian has a Master’s Degree in Web Technologies and is currently working as a Software Developer as part of Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) project.

Support Team

Robert Timmons Holds an Honours degree in Software Engineering from IT Carlow. He has a passion for tracking down and fixing the root cause for issues that arise and resolving customer issues as fast and as efficient as possible.

Jonas Betancor De Leon Originally from Lanzarote, Canary Islands, has an Aviation Management Degree from UAM and a Higher Diploma in Science in Computing from Institute of Technology Blanchardstown.

Emydex Australia

Alan Doocey moved to Australia from Ireland in June 2018 to join the Australian support and implementation team. Alan was previously the IT Manager for Dawn Pork and Bacon.

Ajay Kakumani, joined the Solutions Team of Emydex Australia in October 2018. Ajay has a Bachelor’s Degree and more recently a Post Grad. Diploma in Computer Science and has over 7 years’ Technical experience, most recently as Integration Specialist with Activate Technologies Ltd.

Emydex North America

Recruitment is ongoing to grow our team in North America.

Request a Demo

Emydex Australasia Market Update

Emydex Australia today announces the move to larger corporate offices in The Precinct in Central Brisbane. Located at 14 Browning Street, the new Emydex Australia Head-office is only a 5 min walk to South Brisbane train station, as well as Brisbane river walk that runs through Brisbane city.

The move coincides with a ramp up of the Emydex Australia team, with recent hiring of three new local software engineers, two of whom will join the Emydex Australia Solutions Implementation team, as well as one joining the local technical support team. This brings the total Emydex Australia headcount to eight, including local employees as well as a number of Emydex Ireland employees on secondment to Australia.

The Emydex Australia dedicated support team, works in tandem with the Emydex Ireland support team to provide 24x7 support coverage to Emydex customers located in 14 countries around the world. Recruitment is ongoing presently in Toronto, Canada, to add further support technicians to the global support team based there, for seamless 24x7 coverage for Emydex customers by way of 3 x 8 hour support shifts.

(Some of the Emydex Australia Team with David and James visiting from Ireland.)

Emydex signed its first Australian customer, Junee Lamb in New South Wales, in early 2015. Despite locating its head-office in Brisbane since then, Emydex Australia only recently added their first Queensland processing customer to the customer mix in September 2018, signing contracts with the Sunpork Group. Sunpork Group are the largest Australian owned pig producer and processor, with head-office operations located in Murarrie, Brisbane. Emydex are contracted to supply a factory floor data-capture, production control and traceability reporting MES system to service a new state-of-the-art Kill Floor and Boning room operations at the Swickers processing plant located in Kingaroy, three hours outside Brisbane.

Our most recent go live was Harvey Beef, based in Western Australia. Part of Harvest Road Group and privately owned by the Minderoo Group, Harvey Beef is Western Australia’s leading beef processor. In December 2017, Emydex were invited 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.

Other Emydex customers in Australia include Wodonga Abattoir in Wodonga, O’Connor Beef in Packenham, as well as Victoria Valley Meat Exporters all based in Victoria.

Commenting on the recent expansion of its operations in Australasia, David McMahon, Emydex technology CEO based in Dublin, Ireland said “Australasia is one of three key export markets we are focussed on right now in addition to Africa and North America. Brisbane appears to have a ready supply of software engineers and technicians, compared with Ireland where they are in scarce supply. To the end, the plan is for the Emydex Australia team to grow in size, not just to cater for our customers based in this region, but also to support our global customers, as well as to participate in a number of New Product development projects we are planning to deliver over the next 18 months.

These include Group Production planning and Animal payment systems geared at larger multi-site group processors”. He added “Our vision is to become the No.1 partner of choice for Traceability, Quality and Production control systems with leading meat, fish and food processors in our four key global markets. To achieve this means a need to maintain sharp focus on our core product and service offerings, customers and markets, working with local partners in each region for both Industrial hardware and back-office ERP systems integration”

For more information on Emydex Australia, please contact Ian Carson at  ian.carson@emydex.com.au

Request a Demo

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.”

Request a Demo

Emydex Door-to-Door in Junee Lamb, NSW, Australia

Emydex complete the system implementation with new customer in Australia, Junee Lamb, NSW

 

Junee Lamb is one of New South Wales’ leading sheep meat processors and exporters. With a focus on high quality chilled lamb for the domestic market as well as having significant export sales, Junee process over 3500 head of lambs daily. Junee also provides a service kill and boning operation for other customers such as major supermarket chains who wish to market their own product. All product is certified Halal and some product is processed as organic lamb.

Factory Floor Production Control System

Junee Lamb had a requirement to upgrade their existing factory floor production control system at the plant in Junee, as well as their Sydney wholesale and further processing systems, to a modern, flexible, user-friendly system which fully integrates all processes required for the procurement, slaughter, processing and sale of meat products.

Previously the company were operating with two separate factory floor data collection systems that were disconnected, and the company realised it would be more beneficial to their business to upgrade these systems to a single production management solution, offering one version of the truth, that could be tailored and customised to suit their specific business requirements.

Junee Lamb needed a system that would integrate with their existing back-office financial system, and also needed to incorporate an off-the-shelf label design system that allowed for the integration of foreign text in multiple languages, such as Arabic and Chinese.

Over the past 12 months, Emydex software engineers based in Australia, installed their Manufacturing Execution System (MES) across the entire business operations, including the lamb factory and wholesale centre. Emydex software modules implemented includes the Emydex Kill line & Payments module for stock procurement and payment, Carcass Management Module, Processing & Packing Module used for boning room production management, and the weigh-labelling of product, as well as the Emydex Warehouse Management module, used to manage and report on all factory stocks.

Many benefits have accrued from the implementation of Emydex, including the ability to cost stock purchased prior to processing, to determine a forward selling price. Another benefit is providing detailed costings reporting once skin returns, credits as well as all purchasing costs are known. Feedback to service kill operators and suppliers can be produced as soon as a lot is complete and emailed to customers.

For the domestic trade, the ability to quickly enter orders, and to produce consolidated production requirements and picking sheets, allows the orders to be accumulated during the day. Hanging product is weighed across an Emydex terminal, so invoices can be produced by delivery run from the terminal, as soon as loading is complete. This ensures accurate documentation is produced with invoices travelling with the deliveries. Similar functionality in the Sydney operation has allowed for significant growth with continued customer satisfaction.

Junee are a market-driven company who enjoy a reputation for top quality product and are seen as a market leader, especially into to the Asian market where the Junee Gold brand is recognised as one of the premier Australian brands. Consequently, virtually all stock is produced to order and is often labelled with customer order information (such as port marks) and often have complex, multi-language multi-label requirements.

Centralised Specification System

A key benefit of the system is having one centralised ‘specification’ system, where labels designs are stored with foreign text generated from the product specifications ‘real time’ using the actual text and thus not requiring images or conversion codes. All customer production requirements can be entered into a plan, which in turn generates the daily works orders, touch screen product buttons, all of which are linked to sales orders and labelling requirements. Order requirements eliminate costly over-production, and allow order fulfilment and shipping to be easily managed.

End to End Solution

By providing a fully integrated, ‘end to end’ solution Emydex have provided a platform where efficiencies have been gained in all areas of the business and allow for information to be readily available. Ease of use has ensured user acceptance has been high with minimal impact on the day to day running of the business as the system was rolled out. With 24-hour support in place, Junee can be assured that support is available 24x7 to provide comfort as the company goes ahead with plans to greatly expand the business over the next 12 months.

‘Having run the business across a number of disjointed systems previously, with little by way of fast-responding support, the business has greatly benefitted from have one, fully integrated, easy to use system. Testament to this is our recent and continuing smooth expansion, maintaining our reputation for top quality products and service. The Emydex system has provided significant benefits from its flexibility, ease of use and ability grow as we do. With Emydex now managing our ‘pasture to plate’ processes we feel confident we can meet the challenges as we expand into the future’.
Heath Newton, Managing Director - Junee Lamb

For enquiries contact sales@emydex.com or call Emydex on contact us

Request a Demo