Emydex’s Lamb Kill Line system was implemented in Kepak’s Hacketstown Lamb slaughter plant in February 2011. Following on from a go-live of the same Lamb kill line system In Kepak Athleague in December 2010, this latest system go-live marks the completion of Emydex’s upgrade to all of Kepak’s kill lines in Ireland with six kill lines now running on Emydex, four of which are beef. This leaves only the Beef and Lamb kill lines in Kepak’s Wakefield plant in the UK due for completion in August 2011.
Similar to the Emydex Beef system, the Lamb kill line system allows for online real-time validation of a farmer’s status within Bord Bia’s Lamb Quality Assurance Scheme. This operates at Lamb lot level giving instant feedback as to whether Lamb farmers qualify for the Bord Bia quality assurance scheme or not.
The capacity also exists with the Emydex system for online integration to the Department of Agriculture’s AIMS system for notifying DAFF of animal movements to slaughter factory and kill. Kepak are using the AIMS system for reporting Beef movements in all of its beef kill plants.
Features of the Emydex Lamb kill line system include:
- High Speed Lamb Processing
- Automatic destination code assignment
- Operator friendly running totals
- Tally roll printing
- Automatic switching to next lot when current log complete on Ear tag station (Sequencer)
- Post grading lambs are assigned individual IDS by the system allowing for full traceability on entering boning hall and dispatch
Commenting on the recent Lamb Kill line systems going live, Jim O’Neill, Group IT Manager with the Kepak Group said “it became apparent that our existing Lamb kill line system had approached end of life and additionally any changes required for future advancements would be difficult to undertake. Accompany this with further enhancements at both the Lairage stage (AIM’s and Bord Bia checks) and floor based data collection terminals (QC based activity) as well as the fact we use Emydex now door-to-door it became an easy decision to make.”
O’Neill added “On ‘go-live’ everything went smoothly in both Athleague and Hacketstown and I personally could not ask for more on this. The added fact that data is now more accessible / structured for reporting as well as having the full support of Emydex who understand the meat business is a huge help for any future regulatory changes or internal customisation and it has proven an extremely successful rollout for Kepak on not just the lamb but also the beef implementations to date.”
