Lamb

Emydex Lamb Kill Line system’s now live in Kepak plants

21st March 2011

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.”

Kepak gets the Emydex Treatment

2nd September 2010

Emydex technology was formed over six years ago with the aim of designing and developing data capture and production management software for the food industry based on open technologies. Emydex’s founders spotted a gap in the market place, as at that time the majority of available systems were unreliable, out-dated and tied to specific hardware suppliers.

Roll on six years and today Emydex software is in daily operational usage in over 30 plants owned by some of the largest single and multi-site food processors in Ireland and the UK, such as Dawn Meats, Dunbia the Kepak Group and O’Kane poultry.

Greater Control

Kepak’s journey with Emydex began in 2007. “Previous to Emydex, we had a number of separate in-house systems that weren’t integrated, so it was difficult to gain a true real time view of production. The Emydex platform gives us greater control of our production, better visibility of data, and a better understanding of the data that is critical to drive our business including Yields and Traceability,” says Jim O’Neill, group IT manager with the Kepak Group.

Today Emydex is running end to end in Kepak’s beef slaughter and processing plants in Clonee, Kilbeggan, Hacketstown, Athleague, Cork and Ballymahon. Emydex’s Lamb kill lines are scheduled to go live in Kepak’s Hacketstown and Athleague plants over the next few weeks. “We’re currently working on a project to complete our last Emydex project in Ireland, Cork Retail. We’ll also be looking at our Wakefield plant in the UK, and hope to have the implementation well advanced by year end,” says Jim O’Neill.

“What’s different about Emydex is you’re working with people who understand the demands of the food industry very well. Sometimes end users don’t always know what they want, Emydex have the ability to visualise an idea, without knowing the final solution, and see it through to completion” Industry knowledge coupled with a flexible approach to development allows for the delivery of solutions that adapt to suit customer business processes rather than the other way around. Jim O’Neill continues: “Our previous production management system was developed in-house. For Emydex to deliver a system to Kepak that offers the same level of flexibility, whilst at the same time being a totally reliable and robust solution, is testimony to how well Emydex software has been developed and deployed.”

Unique Feature

One of the unique features of the Emydex system is the Carcass management module. This incorporates a Carcass Splitting engine used to break down and track quarters, and maintain stock in terms of derived weights. “Carcass management gives customers the ability to maintain accurate carcass stocks from time of kill to through boning and dispatch,” Jim O’Neill points out.

Another big win for Kepak was the introduction of a Work Order control process that sits over the whole production process.“Production Work orders are generated in Emydex and issued to the floor so that operators can no longer process without an order on system – a big gain for us,” he explains. The notion of incorporating Work Order control to manage production is an optional feature of the system.

Warehouse Management

“Emydex’s Warehouse management system is the single biggest bonus to Kepak. We are a fast moving business with a high volume of stock movements. With Emydex we now have complete warehouse control and real time stocks down to scan level, without having to compromise on functionality,” adds O’Neill. This functionality includes real time validation at point of scanning an order, where the system warns operators of any discrepancies that arise during order picking, allowing them to take corrective action.

The Kepak group IT manager concludes: “The best way to sum up Kepak’s experience with Emydex is to say that Kepak have experienced operators and supervisors who are 20 years with the company, who with 15 minutes of training are not only competently using the Emydex system every day, but more importantly openly acknowledge how essential and valuable the Emydex system is in assisting them with their day to day tasks.”

Food and drink business
Food & Drink Business Europe, August/September 2010

For more information on the Emydex system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

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

Dawn’s Highland Meats plant in Scotland goes live

20th November 2009

Following the successful roll-out of the Emydex software platform to Dawn Meat’s processing plants in Grannagh, Rathdowney and Charleville In Ireland, Emydex went live in Dawn’s Highland Meats plant in Scotland last week. Highland Meats are a major supplier of prime Scottish beef to the marketplace and operate a state-of-the-art abattoir and deboning facility purpose built in 1995.

Commenting on the launch Martin Curran, Group Factory Systems Manager with Dawn Meats said “it’s a credit to the joint Emydex/Dawn team that we are now in a position where with adequate planning, Emydex module roll-outs out can be completed within a short space of time without any interruption to production. As Emydex is hardware independent we were able to use existing indicators and printers thus saving on cost. New touchscreen PC’s of our choice were installed to run the Emydex Factory Floor applications

James Grennan, Emydex CTO. “The software roll-out took place in tandem with a complete re-vamp of hardware.” This first phase of the Highlands implementation focussed on the roll-out of the Emydex Carcass Management module with full integration to Highland’s existing Kill line system. Emydex Carcass management includes carcass modelling which allows for multiple splitting and de-boning scenarios, full stock management, carcass rebuilding, traceability, and carcass pricing.

Shane Slattery, IT Director with Dawn Meats Group said “Emydex is a central pillar of our strategic I.T. plan going forward, and our goal now is to concentrate on completing the roll-out of Emydex to our primary processing sites by year end. This plan may see aggressive, but we believe that it is achievable on account of the inherent flexibility of the core Emydex product to handle any differences in the business processes required in our disparate sites”.
For more information on the Emydex kill line system click here or contact Emydex on +353 1 8855990

Emydex Lamb Kill Line system’s now live in Kepak plants

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