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Improvements by the country mile

How traditional, community-oriented company Ashbourne Meat Processors embraced change through Emydex

Meet the client

Ashbourne Meat Processors is one of Ireland’s most successful exporters of premium chilled beef products. Founded in 1985, the company exports high quality products all over the world and is proud to be recognised as a family whose expertise and knowledge is passed down from one generation to another. There are nearly 200 people in the company family working in two facilities in the centre of Ireland – Roscrea (slaughtering and cold-storage facilities) and Naas (deboning and cold storage).

Ashbourne Meat Processors is a firm believer in leveraging advanced technology and production facilities.

The opportunity

Ashbourne Meat Processors’ two plants were essentially working in isolation from each other on outdated systems that required a lot of manual input and data entry. The abattoir in Roscrea would take in livestock and create the relevant paperwork. When the carcases were transferred to Ashbourne Meat Processors’ facility in Naas (and to other facilities operated by the company’s clients all over the country), new paperwork would have to be created. This was extremely inefficient and left the company open to human error, duplication and lack of visibility and control.

There were also issues with compliance as the legacy systems used in both operations were not integrated with the Department of Agriculture systems and so there was a need for even more data entry.

“One of the biggest problems is we didn’t have integration with the Department of Agriculture. We knew we had to move on, to integrate and put all of this technology to work for us. Emydex came on board and handled everything. 95% of the carcasses go from Naas to Roscrea and all the paperwork is now electronic and automatic and we can monitor everything remotely which, as the pandemic has proved, is more important than it was.”
PJ Butler, Roscrea Plant Manager

What we did

Emydex is the acknowledged leader when it comes to process development for the food industry and when Ashbourne Meat Processors decided to overhaul the IT infrastructure and embrace the latest processing technology, they called Emydex.

Following a project scoping exercise, the team agreed to divide the job into two phases – one for the slaughter plant in Roscrea and the other for the Deboning operation in Naas. Connecting the two facilities was an obvious but important improvement.

In phase one, The Naas Deboning operation was upgraded by Emydex to deliver an end-to-end factory floor solution. Today Emydex handles the entire processing procedures within this plant, from Intake, Into / Out of Boning, Packing, Dispatch and Warehousing. Emydex also generates all the appropriate Dispatch Documentation, transfers traceability data to customers and allows for full forward and backward traceability. Prior to Emydex’s introduction, Work Orders were paper-based and were phoned down to the operators. Now this is all controlled within Emydex which means there is less likelihood of human error and the whole process is now more streamlined and controlled.

In phase two, the abattoir and cold storage facility 100 kilometres away in Roscrea, County Tipperary, was completely overhauled with everything from animal intake, supplier POs, inter-company paperwork and all procedures – from processing to packing, including sales picking – newly streamlined and automated. Labelling from boning through storage and out in orders was part of the specification as was the automatic electronic generation of all documentation. Real-time data is now updated constantly between the two plants and a new dispatch system created.

Going Live

Emydex systems went live in Naas in January 2019 and Roscrea in October 2019.

The results

Animal intake at the abattoir is now seamlessly and automatically integrated with the Government’s veterinary body, AIMS. Ear tags are scanned and all animal data is confirmed and registered and the Department of Agriculture is notified automatically. This improvement alone saves thousands of man hours every year and completely eliminates human error at the intake point.

“The old system was labour-intensive and setting up jobs needed a lot of work. Emydex brought in a lot of standardisation which has helped us to complete jobs quicker, weigh boxes quicker and see yields a lot clearer. We became 8% more efficient overnight… we highly recommend Emydex.”
Donal Houlihan, Naas Plant Manager, Ashbourne Meat Processors.

There used to be two separate systems and all sorts of mistakes were created by so much manual data entry. This led to delays in cattle payments and problems in registering the passport details of some animals. Now there is just one system and those errors have been eliminated.

Everything from animal intake to carcass dispatch and box generation is automated, tacked, reported and visible all the way from start to finish.

Overall, and almost immediately, efficiency was improved, paperwork virtually eliminated, errors drastically reduced, and profitability increased throughout the company.

In other's words

“The savings in administration were immediate – we saved a labour unit in the office immediately – and the piles of paperwork and stacks of files are a thing of the past. We’re almost paperless now, except for the cheques which some of our more traditional farming suppliers prefer over electronic payments. I estimate that actual physical paperwork has decreased by 95% and that’s a huge achievement.”
PJ Butler, Roscrea Plant Manager, Ashbourne Meat Processors

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A new day at Dawn Meats

Dawn Meats is an outstandingly successful meat processing group. When they wanted to streamline their quality management system on the factory floors, they turned to Emydex

Meet the client

Dawn Meats is a family owned business that was established in Waterford, Ireland in 1980 and has grown to become one of the largest and most important beef and sheep processing groups in the industry. The group employs over 7,000 people in dozens of countries, including 10 sites in Ireland and 12 in the UK, exporting to over 50 countries worldwide.

Every year, Dawn Meats processes over 1 million cattle and 3 million sheep, generating more than €2 billion in turnover for the company and contributing over €1.67 billion to rural economies through 30,000 farms in Ireland and the UK.

The numbers are staggering and so is their success.

The opportunity

Dawn Meats developed their own in-house quality management system which largely relied upon manual, paper-based checks all along their factory floors.

While this was rigorous and helped to maintain the very highest levels of quality products for the company, it was inefficient, creating delays, tons of paper, hours of data entry and leaving the door open for error. The old manual way of working involved lengthy printing, handing out, filling in, returning, checking, countersigning and storage of paper records. On top of that, files had to be physically retrieved in the event of audit.

“Dawn Meats wanted to do away with paper-based quality checks along the floor and to use the data they collect in a far more efficient manner to drive improvements. They wanted a quality management system that would create actions and alerts automatically, so that managers could see in real time what has been done. This would mean they could make more informed decisions and corrective actions, improve compliance and reduce issues.”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO

Since 2013, Emydex have being developing their Quality Management System capable of being used in single site as well as across multi-site Group processors like Dawn Meats. Emydex’s Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) is, in short, a software system that allows food processors carry out their factory and supplier quality and audit checks on tablets, reporting instantly in the back-office, replacing all paper-based quality check sheets on the factory floor.

A perfect fit for Dawn Meats.

What we did

There were five main drivers behind Dawn Meats decision to select Emydex 

The first was Emydex gave them a single system, with our quality module sitting alongside all other Emydex factory floor Production or Warehousing modules on a common platform.

Next, our solution can be fully integrated to shop floor industrial machinery, capable of scanning barcodes, meaning no manual keying of data needed. 

Thirdly, the Emydex EQMS system can be installed on-premise or in the cloud. Emydex don’t force customers to operate their QMS out of the cloud, they can install on-prem if required. 

Another key differentiator is the system can work off-line as well as on-line for all compatible mobile devices, using local databases. Meaning operators can switch to off-line mode when capturing quality data in areas with poor or zero wi-fi coverage. 

Finally, the system is very configurable in-house including an easy to use QC workflow builder tool. This function allows in-house QC personnel (non-IT people) to design and build their own Quality workflows in-house, including QC surveys, QC check-sheets and quality audits, without the need to involve either Emydex developers or their internal IT department.

Going Live

The Emydex EQMS system has been running in at Dawn Meats Irish facilities in both Rathdowney and Carroll’s Cross plants for a number of months. 

At this point Dawn’s group technical QC team have configured internally almost 200 separate QC workflows in Emydex including for example, Abattoir and Boning hall pre-op checks, GMP audits, metal detector checks, glass and hard plastic, knife register and attendance checks etc. 

Once built centrally, such workflows can then be used across all the group’s sites. Having completed site testing over the past number of weeks, the system is currently being rolled out to Dawn’s remaining processing plants in Ireland including Grannagh, Ballyhaunis, Charleville and Kilbeggan.

The results

Emydex EQMS helps Dawn Meats to streamline the QMS processes across their factories and to ensure they are working to the most effective QMS system. As it standardises the QMS and FSM systems across the group it improves compliance and shares best practice throughout all of the facilities. 

Using the Document Management System included within the system, sites can share generic documents and processes, and tailor the specifics to the site. This reduces time lost in writing up documents and figuring out procedures and risk assessments. 

The system creates actions, alerts, notifications and alarms in real time and automatically tells them when they are out of compliance, forcing the immediate implementation of corrective actions.

It improves compliance and reduces issues in announced and unannounced audits, reducing risk with defective product, product recalls and customer satisfaction.

The Emydex system frees up resources to drive product quality improvements and also frees up archive space and storage. It will give central management a holistic view through instant visibility of all factories in one centralised system, making KPI reporting easier and that maximises safety, quality and compliance. 

Finally, this accurate QMS data can drive operational processes and business decisions, helping continuous improvement by providing instant effect data.

In other's words

Speaking shortly after the Emydex system go-live in Dawn’s second site at Carroll’s Cross, John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland said,

“The result is that resources have been freed up, saving cost. Less paperwork, collection is instant, no errors, less time, no printing, archive space has been freed up, we have instant and easy retrieval of documents – everything has improved and is more accurate. 

We got what we wanted which is improved collection, visibility and use of our data. That instant visibility means we have real-time situation reports. The tangible savings are obvious – less paper and less ink, for example. The less obvious savings are evident too – less time and effort, fewer mistakes and corrections, reduced hold-ups, etc. I can see if people are making the required quality checks and if they are making them at exactly the right times.”

Working with Emydex has been great - they understand their system and have been very helpful. Emydex created a system for support that includes excellent on-going communication. We have worked with them over the past decade on traceability, and so we trusted them. I like how their QMS system is so flexible, and how they could configure it to how we wanted to work – not something you get with an out-of-the-box solution. That flexibility meant that we were given artistic license as to how to develop our own workflows.

John Coleman 

Dawn Group Food Safety and Quality Manager 

What’s next?

The next phase is roll out Emydex’s EQMS to all 8 Dawn Meats factories in Ireland. Over 2020 the system will be introduced to Dawn’s sites in the UK.

 

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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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

Request a Demo

When an innovator works in partnership with a leader

What happens when an innovator works in partnership with a leader.

A new Emydex system has helped production run a lot smoother for Danish Crown subsidiary KLS Ugglarps in Hörby, Sweden

A blue-chip client

When Danish Crown approached Emydex about designing and implementing a kill line system on a pilot basis for their plant in Hörby, naturally we were very interested in talking to them.

After all, Danish Crown is one of Europe’s largest meat processing companies and the world’s largest pork exporter. As a group it is involved in a long list of other food products with subsidiaries that include a number of very well-known names in the industry: Friland, KLS Ugglarps, Scan-Hide, Tulip Food Company, Tulip Ltd (UK), Sokolow, Dat-Schaub, ESS-FOOD and WestCrown.

Danish Crown was established in 1887 by Denmark’s first co-operative meat company and today has market access to more than 130 countries around the world. It has sites spread across 10 countries in mainland Europe, the UK and most recently China. Working with this blue-chip organisation presented a great opportunity for Emydex.

The pilot site

The pilot site was the operation in Hörby, Sweden and the brief was to create a modern factory floor IT system that was both highly-configurable and flexible that Danish Crown could potentially roll out across multiple production sites within the group

A challenge for Danish Crown was that through acquisition of processing plants around the globe, their factories use various software solutions of different origin and version, which were difficult to for their Global IT team to manage, as they weren’t integrated, and so some factories were not running as efficiently as they could be.

How we approached it

We assembled a project team of Emydex solution engineers and managers working in Dublin and Danish Crown’s central IT team working in Denmark and they collaborated to commission and configure a state-of-the-art Emydex software solution for the Hörby plant.

The new system featured a number of Emydex modules including Beef and Lamb Kill Line, Primary Packing and Processing, Yield Reporting, Carcass Management and Order Processing/ ERP Integration.

One of the more important elements we had to include was integrating with the Swedish Central Animal Database (CDB) which enables files sent by the government listing every live beef animal to be imported into Emydex. When animals are entered at the stables as they arrive at the factory, their ear tags can be validated against the central database.

Going live

We were ready to launch phase one within 5 months of contract signing, and in January 2019 the collective team from Ireland and Denmark met at the Swedish plant, to prepare for and go-live with the new Emydex system. The implementation went very smoothly thanks to rigorous testing and preparation.

The results

Hörby now has a robust factory floor solution and the most immediate result has been increased productivity for KLS Ugglarps and Danish Crown. “With the new Emydex system one of the added benefits is that it enables vet inspections all along the kill line in real-time. Hide processing has increased visibility and carcass intake is smoother via ASN or parse barcodes which eliminates onerous data entry” said Shane Hayes, Business Analyst/Technical Sales with Emydex

In other’s words

Speaking shortly after the Emydex system go-live in Hörby, Henrik Frøsig, Director, Solutions & Innovation, Global IT, Danish Crown commented,

“From day one we were able to slaughter and process more animals than usual. The kill line didn’t stop as it usually might, and everything was more stable and more efficient from the get-go. Our operators are very pleased with the solution… it has a nice interface and does its job very well. They didn’t need much training at all because the screen tells everyone what they need to do and when.

Efficiency and ease of use is why I recommended it to our other facilities around the world. Plus Emydex service is very good, they react very well to our requests and are getting better and better at what they do as they scale up with us. They listen, respond and react and that’s why we are taking them out of the pilot phase and into our group operations worldwide.

(It is) a good system with a great overview with all the information we need at our fingertips. Inventory overview, for example, is now an easy thing for everyone to see immediately. Emydex gives us data we never really had access to and that means innovation and growth is coming to us too, bringing maturity to our own factory here.”

What’s next?

The next stage of the project will include rolling out the Hörby solution to the other six sites in Sweden and then approach Danish Crown’s global network of sites.

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HJ Nolan Salmon Filleting Yield Control System

HJ Nolan Ltd have been in business for 95 years, since 1912. The company sells premium seafood products worldwide, mainly smoked salmon, under the well-known ‘Nolans Seafoods’ brand. Today the company employs almost 300 people across its two Seafood processing facilities in Dublin, Ireland and Aberdeen in Scotland.

HJ Nolan approached Emydex Technology and SF Engineering in 2014, with a request to commission a new salmon filleting and trimming line from SF Engineering, integrated to an in-line real-time Yield and Efficiency reporting software system from Emydex Technology.

Sean Carolan, IT Manager with HJ Nolan’s in Dublin explains the background to the project, “before the Emydex and SF Engineering solution was implemented, all our salmon filleting was done manually. This resulted in us being unable to calculate our yields until the end of the working day, and this calculation was done with pen and paper. This process was time consuming and often lead to inaccuracies and mistakes. As our production started to ramp-up, we found it increasingly difficult to manage this process, and it became necessary to find a way to automate this process.”

Automated Yield Reporting

SF Engineering and Emydex set to work with Nolans to design and build the end-solution required. This exercise resulted in a SF Engineering salmon filleting & trimming conveyor line, complete with an In-feed holding bin, de-heading station, weigh hopper and a distribution conveyor that feeds the salmon to six salmon filleting operators working on the line. Each individual operator station consists of a buffer hopper, a holding hopper, a trimming table, an offal chute and a reset button.

SF Engineering Salmon Filleting and Trimming SystemSF Engineering Salmon Filleting and Trimming System

To operate the system, each salmon-filleter working on the conveyor line first presses their reset button. This triggers the holding hopper to retract, and a new salmon falls into the hopper from the buffer hopper. The filleter then removes the fish to complete their trimming tasks, and once completed, places the fillet back onto the magenta weighing conveyor. The conveyor records the weight of the fish, and then waits for a free space on the takeaway conveyor. Once free, the conveyor sends the fish off to the pin-bone machine. When the operator’s holding-bin is emptied, the operator presses the reset button, starting the whole process all over again.

Cloud-Hosted or On-Premise

During each operation cycle, Emydex’s Data Capture System (DCS), captures each individual filler’s production data, and calculates the batch yield in real-time. Sean Carolan explains “the Emydex software system allows us to capture accurate yield data; weight-on versus weight-off, as well as production throughput; time-on versus time-off, from each individual filleter in real-time. This information is stored in a central cloud-hosted Emydex database, that can be viewed by both operators on the line, as well as our production supervisors on an industrial monitor running Emydex in the factory.

Real-Time KPI Reporting

Displaying production data and KPIs as they are happening in real-time, tends to have a motivational effect on the filleters working on the line, and improves operator productivity. Emydex production reporting can also be accessed on client PCs in the back-office, as well as anywhere around the world via a smart-phone, given the system is hosted in the cloud”.

On-floor Production reporting monitor displays individual filleter yields and throughputs accurately in real-timeOn-floor Production reporting monitor displays individual filleter yields and throughputs accurately in real-time

Carolan Continues “The ability to export accurate information instantly from the Emydex system, has greatly improved the process by which the filleters are paid. Before the implementation of the Emydex system, the production supervisor would have had to manually calculate each filleters weights and rate of pay. This information can now be exported and sent directly to our accounts department. The individual yield of each filleter can now be much more closely monitored by their supervisor. This allows us to insure each filleter is maintaining a satisfactory yield throughout the day.”

Traceability Reporting

“In addition to Yield and efficiency reporting, Emydex is also recording and reporting on food chain traceability throughout the production process” outlines David McMahon, Emydex CEO. “traceability details recorded for each batch include the Emydex ITN (Internal Traceability number), Production run, Supplier, Harvest Number, Harvest Date, Product, Species and size. Same as for production reporting, traceability reporting is available instantly and accurately, from any device connected to the central database in the cloud. Optionally, the system can be hosting on-site/on-premises if required”.

Customer Support

Sean Carolan concludes “Emydex offered unwavering support to Nolans from the onset of this project. Throughout the initial design process, the implementation and the aftersales support, Emydex has maintained an unparalleled level of support and professionalism. It’s always a pleasure dealing with anyone from the Emydex team, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone in the market for reliable, well-supported factory floor software solution.”

 

About Emydex Technology: Emydex Technology is a leading supplier of Traceability reporting and Production Management Software systems to Meat, Fish and Food Processors around the world. Over 100 food processing factories, operating across 4 continents, use Emydex factory floor software systems to monitor, control and report on their Production yields, stocks, traceability, food quality, safety and compliance.

About SF Engineering: SF Engineering is an award-winning Irish engineering company that designs and manufacturers food processing and packaging solutions for the food industry globally. The company’s Engineering solutions are operating in meat, fish and food processing companies throughout Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Chile

About Emydex & SF Engineering: Emydex Technology and SF Engineering have worked on a number of joint software/hardware integration projects for shared customers over the past number of years. In addition to the salmon filleting line solution delivered to HJ Nolans, other joint projects including Emydex integration to an SF Engineering pork primal grading line, as well as integration to RFID controlled SF Engineering conveyor systems operating in a lamb Processing plant in the UK.

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

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Traceability enabled in Ireland’s Largest Pig Processor

Rosderra Irish Meats Group is the largest pork processing company in Ireland. The group processes over 1.5 million pigs per annum across its two state-of-the-art processing facilities at Edenderry, Co. Offaly, and Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. In addition, Rosderra has a speciality Meat Ingredients facility in Clara, Co. Offaly, a Pork-Curing facility in Jamestown, Co. Leitrim, and a Cooked Meats facility in Stradone, Co. Cavan.

Rosderra approached Emydex in 2014 to replace their existing traceability and production control systems operating across the group approaching end-of-life. After winning a competitive tender, Emydex was awarded the contract to supply a new factory floor data capture IT solution that operates door-to-door across the group’s four main operating plants. All production processes were to be covered, including weighbridge integration, lairage, grading, primal deboning, further processing, packing, order picking and dispatch, stock, yield management and traceability reporting.

Split into eight distinct project phases, the project also included implementing Emydex’s Cold Store system into Rosderra’s Cold Store facility in Jamestown and tight integration with third-party warehouse management systems operating in external cold stores utilised by Rosderra’s production plants.

As part of the initial project phases, Emydex worked with Rosderra’s IT integration partner to build robust interfaces to the group’s SAP system. Integration points were built using AS2 and XML transfer files to allow Emydex to pull products, materials, and customer files from SAP, as well as Customer Sales orders destined for both Rosderra production sites and third-party cold stores, and later send updated Stock data back to SAP for stock valuation and available-to-promise purposes.

After completing the roll-out of Emydex’s Packing and Warehouse Management systems to Rosderra’s four operating plants in early 2016, the focus shifted to the Boning Hall operations in Edenderry and Roscrea. These project phases included implementing Emydex’s boning hall systems for cutting, boning, further processing, and Yield Control. Yield Reporting from Emydex includes Carcass chill loss, Cutting yield, chill loss/cutting summary and Boning Hall yield reports.

Presently, the project is in its final phase, which covers the Abattoir operations at both Edenderry and Roscrea, including a centralised slaughter plan and livestock appointments system, weigh-bridge integration, lairage bookings, bulk sequencing, and detained and pig grading stations. Reporting will include a real-time slaughter line monitor program that will accurately display the status of the slaughter with analysis by lot. Slaughter line analysis can be displayed in both tabular and graphical reporting formats.

Commenting on the project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO, said, “We are now well into the final stages of a two-year Emydex systems roll-out across the Rosderra group, covering door-to-door processes as well as integrations to back-office ERP, 3rd party cold stores and suppliers as well as factory floor machinery. Looking back over the two years, I see the project has run smoothly. Both the Emydex and Rosderra project teams worked well together to plan and deliver each project phase on schedule without any major disruption to operations. Rosderra is now reaping the benefits of having a robust factory floor data capture Production control system installed, with Emydex providing group and plant managers and supervisors with real-time and accurate reporting on their Production Yields, Stocks and Traceability.”

Louis Ennis, Rosderra Group Finance and Emydex project sponsor added, “Rosderra Irish Meats Group chose Emydex as an end-to-end solution to replace our legacy system. The installation, which is currently ongoing, will be completed over multiple phases across multiple sites, with all implementations running smoothly and with minimum disruption to the business. The first implementation was the warehouse and packing modules, and, through added interfaces with our ERP system, brought immediate benefit to the business through greater visibility on orders, improved data validation and reduced administration, especially around our cold store loads where manual input has been greatly reduced. Overall, the system greatly improved real-time information and offered ease of use and improved flexibility when making changes”

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