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

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