Recipe Formulation

Enterprise Management Software

9th November 2021

A new era in Food Enterprise Management Software Applications

Emydex’s new suite of Enterprise Management Software (EMS) applications are designed specifically for multi-faceted food processing companies, those which are mainly multi-plant operations, usually overseen by a group HQ plant. Typically, these plants are spread geographically across a country or several countries and would be large food processing organisations.

It is difficult to maintain data integrity across these often-complex businesses, is often labour intensive and prone to human error with the duplication of information across multiple systems.

Emydex’s answer to this problem is the Emydex Enterprise Management System (EMS) suite of software which comprises a series of web apps targeted specifically at maintaining data integrity, reducing data entry, and improving control across plants.

From a system architecture point of view, the EMS layer resides between the customer ERP system and the various operating plants.

The EMS layer of the Emydex software stack is made up of several web apps tailored towards solving these problems for multi-plant customers.

Business Intelligence (BI)

Emydex BI is the latest app of the Enterprise layer allowing customers to surface data to provide visual real-time and trending analytical dashboards. Sitting at the corporate level allows integration to multiple plants to surface data as well as other third-party systems such as ERP & financial systems. Find out more here

Master Data Management (MDM)

Master Data Management (MDM) is designed to control data integrity to ensure it is consistent across all plants. The Master data management module allows customers to centrally manage master data such as products, label designs, kill line destinations as well as other required data.

This removes the effort needed by plant staff to replicate data into each instance of Emydex which instantly reduces the risk of human error. With EMS MDM, corporate users can centrally control all aspects of master data which creates consistency across the business. An example of this is that if a label design is managed centrally, the label will look identical, no matter the plant it was produced from, which from a customer's point of view can be critical. This can also reduce incorrect labelling which can cause product recalls and market rejections, impacting the business brand and reputation.

EMS App Deployment

This app empowers the Emydex customer's IT department to take control of deploying the Emydex applications out to the plants. This increases IT security and allows the IT department to pull updates into the business network to then choose when to deploy to the individual plants. This in turn allows the customer to be more self-sufficient in relation to updating plant's MES software outside of production.

EMS Exchange

EMS Exchange is Emydex’s newest approach to integration between the plants and third-party systems such as ERP systems and cold stores. It allows for the configuration of rules to route data from one system to other(s). This reduces the customisation required to integrate the Emydex applications into other third-party systems

Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS)

Emydex’s first Enterprise module was the Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) which allows customers to centrally control, capture, store and report on various quality & technical aspects of their operations.
Find out more here…

The future of EMS

The Emydex new product development team are busy working on new apps and features to further extend and enhance our offerings, including additional EMS modules such as Centralised Product Specifications, Production Planning, Payments, Livestock Appointments and Yield Costing.

Watch this space!

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

Rosie & Jim Value Added Poultry Processor live on Emydex

27th September 2017

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

Order Control

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

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

Recipe Formulation

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

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

Real-Time Traceability Reporting

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

Sage Integration

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

Go-live

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

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

Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

Production Reporting

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

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

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

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

Traceability Systems Live in La Rousse Foods

1st September 2016

DUBLIN/BELFAST – IRELAND:
With operations located in Dublin and Belfast, La Rousse Foods specialise in the supply of fine foods to premium food establishments since 1992. Acquired by the Swiss-based food group Aryzta in 2015, the company has more than 1,300 corporate customers in Ireland, and have their own catering butchery, cheese-maturing room and chocolate lab. La Rousse offer a wide range of fresh, seasonal and innovative premium produce from a network of local and international producers.

La Rousse approached Emydex in 2014 with a requirement to implement a robust factory floor Traceability and Production management system to replace manual operations in both their Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. La Rousse were looking for a factory floor IT system that would provide them with real-time, accurate reporting on production, yields and Stocks, with full forwards and backwards food chain Traceability from factory door to door. For shop floor equipment La Rousse opted to implement Bizerba industrial weighing scales, harsh environment terminals as well as printers.

They were previously operating a paper based Traceability and Quality Assurance recording and reporting system, which was time consuming to both administer and report on. Stock control was also a manual operation which was labour intensive and time consuming. Previously the Cheese Operations area operated with a Microsoft Dynamics Nav system, whereby Purchase Orders for Intake were keyed directly into a Nav form running on an office PC located at Cheese Intake.

Weights and traceability information were later keyed in manually against the purchase orders. La Rousse identified a requirement for a software system that fully integrated with Navision in real time and replaced the manual in-put of weights and traceability information, as well as to manage the processing, packing, order picking and dispatch of cheeses to end-customers.

In parallel, La Rousse were planning to double the size of their existing catering butchery operations by building a new purpose-built state-of-the-art butchery on a site adjacent to their existing operation in Dublin. For this new operation, La Rousse also needed a factory floor system capable of production managing this new production facility from factory door-to-door.

Cheese Processing Software

Phase one of the project saw the rollout of Emydex’s Production Management Software to the Cheese Operations covering intake, processing & packing, picking & dispatch, returns both to/from suppliers and customers and QC Hold. Due to the flexible nature of the software, Emydex were able to integrate to la Rousse’s existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, providing a seamless real-time interface between both systems.

Packing and Processing Software

Phase two was a much more substantial project seeing the rollout of Emydex’s Packing & Processing software module to the new catering butchery operation running on fifteen Bizerba industrial terminals, connected to Bizerba Industrial Weighing scales and printers covering operations such as Intake, Debagging, Deboning, Dry Aging, Preparation Lines, Metal Detection and Packing. Emydex’s Warehouse management module is also installed, running on a number of intelligent handheld scanning terminals covering Internal stock movements as well as sales order picking and dispatch.

Today La Rousse now have a comprehensive Production management software system that is fully integrated with their back-office ERP system.

Commenting on the Emydex project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “La Rousse Foods were a great fit customer for Emydex to work with. A professional run company from the outset, the La Rousse Foods project team had a clear vision as to their system needs, with defined project objectives and requirements. They were insistent in seeking to understand the precise inputs and outputs to each and every stage of their production processes, with the result that today they have an Emydex system that provides both bullet-proof traceability processes, as well as accurate and real-time accurate reporting on Production, Yields and Stocks.”

Stuart Campbell, General Manager with La Rousse Foods added “Emydex have provided us with a robust Factory Floor Traceability and Production Management system for both our Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. Our Management team now have accurate real time reporting on production, yields and stocks as well as full forwards and backwards food chain traceability from factory door to door.”

Emydex live in MeatCo, Namibia

10th April 2014

WINDHOEK – NAMIBIA:
Emydex today announce that their factory floor Data Capture, Production Reporting and Traceability system is now live and operational in MeatCo (Namibia)’s main beef processing plant in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

The beef primal deboning system in Windhoek is the first of an eight phase project that will see Emydex systems rolled out across MeatCo’s six beef processing operations in four separate locations in Namibia, as well as integrating Emydex to the Table Bay Cold Store in South Africa.

The two year, Euro 300k contract includes system rollout to Meatco’s two export approved slaughter and boning plants in Windhoek and Okahandja. Both plants are capable of slaughtering up to 1500cattle per day. The naturally grass fed Beef for which Namibia is famous is supplemented with Beef from Meatco’s own feed lot at Okapuka.

The Meat Corporation of Namibia (‘MeatCo’) also operate two further non-export abattoirs owned by the Namibian government but managed by Meatco, in Katima and Oshakati, which will both see Emydex installed. Finally a Wholesale beef processing plant and a cannery (both on the Windhoek site) will operate Emydex’s production management system.

Having pre-configured MeatCo’s customer specific business requirements in Dublin during February, Emydex staff were onsite in Windhoek during the Months of March and April, further configuring and customising the Emydex system to comply with the local market requirements of Meatco’s main export plant.

Phase one of the Windhoek project covered the carcass chills, carcass dispatch, boning hall, primal and carton packing, finished product stock, carton dispatch and integration to Meatco’s Sage X3 ERP system. Emydex are currently working on the Meatco Wholesale plant in Windhoek, soon to be followed by the Cannery and finally the Windhoek Beef slaughter line.

The company are targeting September 2014 as a likely roll out date for Windhoek system into Meatco’s second export plant in Okahandja.Due to the inherent flexibility and usability of the Emydex system Meatco are planning to roll out the Emydex system in the Oshakati and Katima abattoirs themselves,with remote support from Emydex as needed.

Commenting on the first phase of the Emydex system roll-out, AndriesTaljaardt,Meatco’s Windhoek Plant Manager said

“While slaughter continues uninterrupted, system upgrades are currently being effected at our Windhoek abattoir to improve the effectiveness of operations and maximise output in order to cater to growing customer demands.

Because of these demands, and the fact that preferences and specifications are continuously changing, we have to move into the direction which the market is moving. We have installed a new Production Management Software System (Emdyex) and layout in our Windhoek abattoir deboning department, which allows for a lot of value addition to our products. The Emydex system controls the volumes and all the information on the deboning floor and is responsible for the production recons and the labelling of products.

With the new layout, we have introduced an additional vacuum line and an additional frozen line. With that, we can now put up to 420 carcasses through deboning per day within normal working hours. For May, we are looking to put more than 6600 carcasses through deboning. Round about June, once the system is fully implemented, the number of carcasses we want to put through deboning is about 7000.”

In addition Andries said “We chose Emydex given it is a highly technological system that is used in many international abattoirs that adhere to European Union standards. Meatco is a pioneer in quality standards compliance in Namibia and is one of the first companies to achieve certification for international standards like ISO 9001 and HACCP.”

Commenting on the Emydex system roll-out, Nico Weck, Group Chief Financial Officer at the MeatCo group said “since implementing Emydex’s shop floor barcode labelling and scanning system at our Windhoek primal deboning operations, our managers now have instant access to accurate reporting on our Yields, Stocks and Traceability”.

Dunbia (Preston) complete end-to-end Emydex roll-out in 8 weeks

2nd February 2010

The Dunbia Group, headquartered in Dungannon, Northern Ireland, recently completed installation of an entire Emydex iWAMS solution at their Retail plant in Preston, England. Dunbia (Preston) is a modern processing facility comprising a beef and lamb abattoir and de-boning facility, and a separate retail packing operation.

The facility has the capacity to process up to 1,500 cattle, 10,000 lambs and 600 tonnes of retail packed product per week. Dunbia originally installed the iWAMS Warehouse Management System module in their Preston plant two and a half years ago in September 2007.

This recent upgrade project covered the entire facility end-to-end from stock intake, to production, packing, yields & costings, warehousing and dispatch, and incorporated Sales Order and Purchase order processing.

“This latest project took just eight weeks to complete from start to finish”, said Jay Adams, IT Service Delivery Manager in Dunbia (Preston).

“The project ran relatively smoothly when you consider the facility never had a transactional system running before, meaning we had to train all our staff over the two months before the system went live. Emydex also provided two weeks on-site support post go-live, which was a great reassurance in case anything went wrong, which it didn’t.”

“In terms of benefits, the system gave Dunbia (Preston) immediate control over systems and reporting. Using the Emydex Data Management System, back office staff had instantaneous access to far more accurate reporting of efficiencies, yields and giveaways and operator performance” Said Adams.

The Emydex software system roll-out coincided with a parallel roll-out of new plant hardware including Marel Terminals, and Avery Scales. This included integration to high-value processing lines incorporating fully automated weighing and box level labelling.

“Emydex’s ‘open architecture’ means it can integrate with any third party hardware, and as all the integration protocols had been written before, integrating was a breeze. Hardware independence is one of Emydex’s key selling points”, said Adams. “We’re not tied down to a narrow choice of hardware; we can pick and choose the hardware configuration that best suits our requirements”.

Another key selling point with Emydex is the flexibility offered within the software itself.

“We rolled out the standard flavour of the iWAMS Retail Solution initially, but over time we have made changes to the system in order to suit the specific ways we work in Dunbia (Preston), and the individual demands of our customers. Its fine to talk about “group standards”, but at the end of the day every facility will have differing requirements whether it’s down to the physical layout of the plant that doesn’t facilitate a ‘standard’ transaction flow, or down to the individual reporting requirements of a MD. So too, every customer or supermarket chain will have different requirements, so your systems have to have the ability to adapt to deliver these changes easily and quickly. That’s what we have now with Emydex.”

About Dunbia

Dunbia is one of Europe’s leading suppliers of beef and lamb products for the national and international retail, commercial and foodservice markets. Formerly known as Dungannon Meats, the group is headquartered in Granville, near Dungannon, Northern Ireland. Dunbia operates from ten sites in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland.. Out of the total workforce of nearly 3000, some 800 are employed in Northern Ireland. Dunbia supply international markets and UK supermarket chains, including Sainsbury’s, Asda, Iceland and The Co-operative. The firm also includes the former Rose County Foods site in Sawley, Lancashire, and the former Oriel Jones and Son facility in Llanybydder, Wales.
For more information on the Emydex kill line system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

Enterprise Management Software