Harvey Beef

8th June 2020

Harvey Beef
Case Study

Beef
Australia

One of Australia's leading beef processing facilities

Beef

Australia | Australasia

Single-Site

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, labeling and 3rd party barcode scanning, that were integrated to their back-office Microsoft Dynamics Nav ERP system.

What Harvey Beef Says

“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."

Wayne Shaw, General Manager of Harvey Beef

Challenge

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 that 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.

Solution

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.

Outcome

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 has 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.”