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When Canfisco went fishing for an IT partner

Following acquisition and growth, The Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco) found themselves with a variety of different legacy IT systems, all working independently. They turned to Emydex to help land one system that integrated everything.

Meet the client

The Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco) has sustainably harvested wild fish from the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest for over 110 years. The company operates the largest fishing fleet in British Columbia, over 850 vessels, that every year lands over 100 million pounds of mostly salmon, herring, rockfish, halibut and hake. Landed fish is supplied to the company’s nine processing plants located on the pacific coast in Richmond, Prince Rupert, Greater Vancouver, and Alaska.

The opportunity

Canfisco has grown both organically and through acquisition. As each new acquisition was moved into the Delta Pacific Seafood location, the software and processes were not consolidated into a single integrated process or software application. This left Canfisco with six different major applications and many Excel applications to compensate for the different systems at work throughout the group.

“Company acquisitions had left us with a patchwork quilt of components and old systems that were handling all of our processing.”
John Capling, Project Manager, Canfisco

However, the greatest risk to the business came from the out-of-date applications running on an over 25-year old Unix platform with limited hardware support. This environment left a very disjointed operation that only worked due to the efforts of staff acting as the glue to keep everything working together. Before Emydex came on board, Canfisco had at least five BOM process, four box labelling process and three separate financial applications in place in the organization.

What we did

Canfisco needed a new IT system that could provide a single source of the truth for the organization, providing improved visibility and measurement throughout the business, streamlining administration and, ultimately, improving the performance of the company.

The consensus within the various departments and plants was that any new software solution should be able to replicate what they were already doing, process-wise, i.e. it should keep the good things that worked well and with which everyone was familiar. To this, we should add some magic in the form of some low-hanging savings improvements, whilst at the same time providing the foundation for a software system that can grow into a more advanced solution over time.

Although we are replicating Canfisco functionality I was impressed to see how the Emydex team automated the link between the plant’s recorded catch of fish to actual sales, to ensure Canfisco sales can presell the fresh fish. This ensures they can get maximum value for the catch versus having to freeze the fish for less profits.
Terry McCorriston, Sales Manager/Business Analyst, Emydex North America

Going Live

Canfisco understood that they needed to address the highest risk area which was the groundfish applications running on the old Unix system so a phased implementation was taken to minimise any operation interruptions. After initial consulting and analysis, it was decided to go live with the ground fish box labelling and fillet line in December 2019 and bring on the port receiving in spring of 2020.

The Results

Key to the success of this project was to ensure it would be a gentle evolution and not a revolution. Keeping staff at all levels throughout the operation happy was very important and Emydex was careful to tread lightly. The most obvious improvement has been the elimination of the major risk of running the business on antiquated unsupported Data General (DG) Unix equipment. While there are a few minor applications still on the Unix platform, the team is working to quickly migrate them in the next phase.

Phase one has been completed but already administration efficiency has improved, as expected, thanks to reduced duplication of entry into multi applications and processes. Time consuming consolidation has been reduced and as other fish species are migrated to the new system in upcoming phases, staff will see all of the improvements fall into place.

“Emydex combined a bunch of old systems into one to handle all of our processing. Now everything is processed and tracked through one piece of software. Phase one went very well and so far, it is looking very good and the great thing is there wasn’t a steep learning curve for our people on the floor. Visibility has improved greatly, and we know real efficiencies are coming down the line.

Emydex took what we liked from the old systems and mirrored it, especially with scales and processes – things are labelled now and tracked automatically as opposed to manual entry of old.”
John Capling, Project Manager, Canfisco

There is now better traceability of fish from catch, through processing, to the end sale. Operational performance has improved too due to reporting on giveaway and production yields (with a potential of 2% improvement in raw material utilization) and, of course, Emydex has provided the foundation to build the operational performance measurements over time.

Interestingly, most of the implementation was done remotely which saved costs for the client and also worked out perfectly as the Covid-19 pandemic struck right in the middle of the project and had little effect on our timelines.

“I was happiest with the Emydex team’s flexibility to work with Canfisco to adapt (the software) to allow a phased implementation. I was also impressed that Emydex was able to handle the volume of transactions from day one of going live.”
John Capling, Project Manager, Canfisco

What's Next?

This is the first phase of the implementation – the next phases will cover other fish species – and it builds the foundation applications for future improvements, including analysis of expected costs against actual costs, gross margin visibility at the different levels (including vessel, customer and sales order analysis). Improvements in dry goods control will come next as will the automation of HACCP and QC processes and cold storage invoicing.

In other's words

“Emydex spoke our language, much more than Microsoft… they understood our industry and our business. The (Emydex) system is friendlier, easier to use, intuitive and when the warehouse guys saw it they gave us their blessing so the decision to run with it was a no-brainer in the end. It has replaced very old legacy systems that weren’t integrated and left us very exposed to risk. The result is a solution that’s much more efficient and customisable so that we can add functionality as people have requested it.

The Emydex team were great – very responsive and easy to work with, despite the time difference… very professional and they really know their business. I’m looking forward to Emydex expanding further into our other processes, cold storage, our warehouses and beyond”
Mark Cornell, Senior Vice President

Contact Sales in any of our Dublin, Brisbane, South Africa or Toronto offices

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Emydex New Hires in Dublin, Australia & North America

In line with continued growth and expansion, mainly in overseas core markets, Emydex is pleased to announce new hires across the board, joining the Emydex Project Management, Development, EQMS and Customer Support teams over the past few months.

Project Managers

Ann-Marie Caffrey joined the Project Delivery Team in September 2018. Ann-Marie has a Degree in Information Technology from Dublin City University and previously worked for Hewlett Packard as Senior IT Project Manager.

Ciara McIvor joined the Project Management Team of Emydex Dublin in August 2018. Ciara has a Master’s Degree in Project Management and over 5 years project management experience.

Development Team

Robin O’Neill joined Solution Delivery Team in June 2018. Robin studied at the Universities of Glasgow and Leeds and has over 10 years Software Development experience in all aspects of the software development lifecycle.

Ekaterina Pushkina, joined the Solutions Delivery Team of Emydex Dublin in October 2018. Kate has a Master’s Degree and over 18 years Software Development experience.

Varun Kasana, joined the Products Division Team. Kasana has a Master’s in Computer Science and has over 8 years’ Development experience.

Jose Rubio joined the Development Team in January 2019. Jose has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and moved to Ireland in 2011, working as a Software Engineer since 2012, and as a Team Lead since 2016.

Rory McGarrigle joined the Development Team in January 2019. Rory is an experienced software developer with over eight years’ experience across a wide variety of technologies, delivering challenging projects.

EQMS Team

Agnieszka Kregiel-Grzyb joined Emydex as an intern whilst completing a Software Development trainee course. Previously she worked in customer service for 8 years and completed a Management course in DIT. Most recently Agnieszka completed a Higher Diploma in Science in Computing at NCI.

Brian Shortall joined Emydex as a member of the Product Delivery Team. Brian has a Master’s Degree in Web Technologies and is currently working as a Software Developer as part of Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) project.

Support Team

Robert Timmons Holds an Honours degree in Software Engineering from IT Carlow. He has a passion for tracking down and fixing the root cause for issues that arise and resolving customer issues as fast and as efficient as possible.

Jonas Betancor De Leon Originally from Lanzarote, Canary Islands, has an Aviation Management Degree from UAM and a Higher Diploma in Science in Computing from Institute of Technology Blanchardstown.

Emydex Australia

Alan Doocey moved to Australia from Ireland in June 2018 to join the Australian support and implementation team. Alan was previously the IT Manager for Dawn Pork and Bacon.

Ajay Kakumani, joined the Solutions Team of Emydex Australia in October 2018. Ajay has a Bachelor’s Degree and more recently a Post Grad. Diploma in Computer Science and has over 7 years’ Technical experience, most recently as Integration Specialist with Activate Technologies Ltd.

Emydex North America

Recruitment is ongoing to grow our team in North America.

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Emydex North America Market Update

Emydex Technology, a Dublin company specialising in Traceability Software for the food processing industry, have secured its third customer in the North American market. This contract brings to 120 the number of processing plants using Emydex software worldwide, in 14 countries. The company secured its first North American contract in Canada two years ago with pork processor Donald’s Fine Foods and has since closed a deal with Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco).

Emydex was established in 2004 by co-founders James Grennan and Redmond Burke to offer fish and pork producers and food processors an integrated production management system tailored to their needs.

Now led by chief executive David McMahon, Emydex employs more than 50 people at its Dublin headquarters and overseas offices in Canada, Australia and South Africa. The company’s factory- floor software is aimed primarily at large-scale processors. The software combines production control with traceability and quality reporting, yield analysis, stock and food safety management.

“We’ve now moved into the Saas (software as a service) space,” said McMahon.

“We are very focused on our three export markets: Africa, Australia and North America.

“We have spent 12 years developing solutions for 60 customers, with 120 plants around the world, and the question then became ‘what else do they need from us?’.

“We’ve spent the last two years building an online quality management system and that’s been really successful. We then went back to our customers with ten other products we were thinking of building and asked them ‘how interested are you?’.

“They came back and offered to help us with design and testing. So, we’re now working on three new products, two of which are Saas, for group production planning group animal payments and Factory of the Future.”

An export-led company, Emydex has customers in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Namibia. The firm targets countries with strong meat exports, a relatively low concentration of large-scale processors and a strong regulatory framework for food traceability.

Emydex is a client company of state agency Enterprise Ireland. “They have helped us with R&D grants for new product development and internationalisation grants to help market entry into our key new markets,” said McMahon.

Written by Elaine O’Regan – Sunday Business Post

The Business Post

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Keeping up with demand in North America

Over the past 2 years the meat, poultry and seafood industries in North America have seen positive production increases for all protein sectors. There is a general sense of optimism about the industry as they look forward to the future. Consumer consumption rates for meat, poultry and seafood continue to increase, creating increased demand in both domestic and international markets.

These increased demands have created a culture of unrelenting focus on operational efficiencies in processing plants. Companies are looking to technology to support measurement of current processes to support continual improvements.

Processors were pushed to make the most of good economic conditions in 2018 and into 2019, sales projections are up, acquisitions are occurring more frequently, and expansion is happening in the meat, poultry and seafood industry.

As baby boomers retire and millennials move into and up the organisation, protein processors need to rethink their approach for managing and measuring the efficiency of their production lines. As the labor market continues to tighten, protein processors will need automated measurement of their line results to minimise manual labor required and to be able to provide the instant feedback across the organisation.

Emydex Software enables processors to get continual feedback from the production floor and allow some of the management positions to work remotely, through access to the Emydex tools.

Running the right shop floor solution can streamline your processing and packaging operations, expedite recalls and accurately predict yields and cost productions. The current ERP solutions lack this functionality and require a solution like Emydex to address those deficiencies. North American Meat Processors are recognising that most ERP applications support the office needs but they do not meet the unique shop floor needs of a meat processor.

Emydex Technology specialise in Factory Floor Software for Food Processors and are focusing on North America as one of three core export markets. Having secured its third customer in the North American market, this latest contract brings to 120 the number of processing plants using Emydex software worldwide, in 14 countries. The company secured its first North American contract in Canada two years ago with pork processor Donald’s Fine Foods and has since closed a deal with Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco).

Terry McCorriston, Emydex North American Business Analyst and shop floor software vendor for the meat and seafood industry, previously worked as the director of CSB-Systems, and was IT Manager at J.M. Schneiders Inc., a large meat processor in Canada. Terry has spoken at numerous international conferences on the importance of product costing in the meat industry.

Terry is certified with APICS (American Production and Inventory Control Society), to be able to provide sound recommendations on supply chain and operational processes.

Terry has a passion for helping protein industry companies improve their operations with use of technology.

For more information on the Emydex system, contact local agent Terry McCorriston 

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Yield & Costing Analysis in the Food industry

NORTH AMERICA:

The food industry is no different than any other complex manufacturing business whose goal is to make a profit. If you are not able to calculate your true manufacturing cost, it could lead to lost profits, orders and customers. To remain profitable, you need to answer a number of questions; Are you pricing your products to make a profit? Are you producing the products at the cost you calculated? Are you contributing to overhead and profit levels to meet your strategic business goals?

In the food industry, there are very small margins, making it difficult for food companies to achieve and maintain profitability. One of the first lessons of accounting is the equation of Profit = Revenues – Costs

In the food industry, the volumes are fairly flat, growth is slow, so food processing companies need to be focused on managing costs as the best option to improve profitability. Determining what are the product and customer costs is not as simple as it seems in the food industry. Over the last 15 years many food companies have either gone out of business or been bought out by a larger company due to lack of profit.

Current state of ERP vendors able to support the food industry costing

Food companies are not able to calculate accurate costs with their current software systems due to limitations in these systems required to support food industry requirements. The quality and specification of raw materials vary significantly from vendor to vendor and at different times of the year. This is especially true in the meat industry where each species carcass is a different size and weight, so for example, each ham or loin produced has different amounts of lean/fat, bone and trim.

The process of blending, mixing and cooking can produce different yield losses depending on the attributes of the raw materials used, and the setup of the equipment. ERP vendor software is not designed to track and measure yield loss tracking as the product moves through the various food production processes.

Due to the limitations in the costing functionality, many companies use manual (spreadsheet) calculations to determine product costs. While spreadsheets may work for smaller, ad-hoc analysis, they fall short in handling massive complex costing processes due to their limitations with scalability, data integrity, integration and security. They are also open to clerical error (no validation), and are typically reliant on a few key individuals within the organisation. The ‘hit by a bus’ risk is a cause for concern.

Furthermore, manual cost calculations are then fed into some type of profitability analysis, but the challenge is that the manual data capture is flawed, making these analyses less than optimal. For food companies to survive in the current economy they require accurate and complete profitability information.

Addressing the challenge of calculating costs

From the big picture perspective, it is relatively easy to calculate profit. Total up all your revenue and expense accounts and calculate the difference between the two. This tells you that in total income made or lost, but at a macro level. The calculation of profit for specific products or customers can easily explode into a massive undertaking. Companies do not know where to look to address their profitability issues.

The current situation of limitations of profitable reporting is a direct correlation with the challenges the food manufacturers face when calculating accurate cost results – lack of an automated costing process, substantial manual processes, lack of operational measurement to ensure accuracy of results and lack of granularity.

Food companies have tried different approaches to address the costing requirement. They have tried sophisticated spreadsheets, in some cases using a network of complex spreadsheets. Others have attempted to modify their ERP or Financial (GL) systems to handle the advance costing needs of the food industry, but often these modifications fail to deliver a comprehensive cost system. Lastly, companies have embarked on building their own custom cost system from the ground up. While these systems will give the company exactly the costing system they want, it comes at a significant cost of time, money and resources.

Operational costing systems are the next generation of solutions created specifically to handle the complex costing and measurement environments encountered by food process manufactures. These package solutions that integrate with your existing ERP or Financial System allow companies to rapidly gain access to detailed cost data that that is specific to their food production process. Access to detailed product information brings a whole new level of insight on operation performance and arms the Operational Management team with information to effectively manage and implement continuous improvement projects to reduce costs.

By adding an operational costing and measurement system to the existing business systems, food manufactures can remedy many of the symptoms that produce an ailing cost process.

How Operational Costing in the Food Industry Improves Profitability

Your competitor just undercut your price, so to be competitive in the market you’re probably thinking that all you have to do is meet or beat your competitor’s price to get the deal. Let’s just reduce or eliminate the overhead contribution, and quote the price based on the materials and labour, then mark up the cost to meet the company profit margins. Right? Wrong. There are many manufacturing companies who price on the basis of what their competitors charge or the market price, without considering whether their competitors have a different cost structure or knowing their own true manufacturing costs. If you base your prices on what others are doing, you’ll never know if you’re taking in profitable business.

Instead, adopt a different approach that will bring in profitable business while remaining competitive, by implementing Emydex’s Yield and Costing Module that is a fully integrated component of the Emydex Production Management Platform, that is tightly integrated to your existing ERP or Financial System.

Emydex Yields Core

Yields & Costings Module, on Emydex Core Platform, integrated to back-office ERP

With the recipe BOM (Bill of Materials), Emydex is able to model the flow of raw materials, ingredients, packaging, resources and overhead through the food production process. By monitoring actual costs and product movement through the process, Emydex is able to generate yield variances, and measure the financial impact of production using standard reports to validate the accuracy of the costing standards.

These costs and variances can be integrated with your existing financial system to provide a more global analysis of profitability.

By knowing the true costs of producing products at your food plant, Emydex’s Yield & Costings software gives you the knowledge needed to make strategic and operational decisions that will keep your business profitable.

Terry McCorriston, Authorised Distributor, Emydex North America

Emydex Canada / North America

Terry McCorriston Consulting
28 McGibbon Crt
Kitchener, Ontario
Canada
N2A 3P2
T: + 001 519 500 0540

Terry McCorriston

LinkedIn – profile

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Email – sales@emydex.com

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Emydex running in 4 of 6 Irish Beef processing plants granted US export licences

Ireland is currently the only EU state to have been granted access to the lucrative US meat market since the BSE crisis in the 1990’s. Since the embargo was lifted earlier this year, Beef exports from Ireland to the US have increased significantly, according to the Department of Agriculture. As of November 2015, it is estimated that 1300 tonnes of beef valued at €8.5m, has been exported from Ireland.

A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said “This is an exceptionally strong start to this trade, considering that the first exports only went in March of this year and some of the plants were only approved for export as recently as September.”

To date only six Irish beef processing plants have managed to attain the necessary approvals to export beef to the US market.

Emydex Technology are pleased to note that four of the six plants that have succeeded in attaining the necessary Export approvals, are Irish beef processing plants that operate Emydex software on their factory floors for data capture, production and Traceability reporting.

Beef US Exporters - Dawn Meats - Charleville | Kepak - Kilbeggan | Slaney Foods International | Kepak - Longford

“It’s good news to see that trade has recommenced between Ireland and the US after 15 years of no activity. It will still take some time yet for Irish processors to restore and build new trading relationships with US customers, but given the high prices currently being experienced in the US, coupled with a demand for high-quality grass-fed beef, this bodes well for Irish supply”
David McMahon – Emydex CEO

Emydex software provides meat, fish and food processors with accurate reporting on shop floor production yields, stocks and traceability information in real-time.

“Today our software is running on over 1200 factory floor terminals as well as over 600 handheld scanners in 80 food processing plants spread across Ireland, the UK, France, Africa and Australia”

“Whether our customers have requirements for an abattoir or boning hall system, production planning or recipe control, traceability reporting or quality and compliance, we have software modules that can cater for each need.”

“As the software is modular and customisable, it means our customers can start on one particular pain point or area of the plant, and once this system is live and bedded in, the system can be extended to other areas or functions within the plant”added McMahon.

Source: The Irish Times Post by Eoin Burke-Kennedy

The Irish Times

In other related news, Northern Irish Pork Processors, Dunbia, have welcomed provisional approval for exporting pork to China. Dunbia also operate Emydex Factory Floor Software throughout their processing plants, so it comes as great news to Emydex to see that our customers are paving the way for the Irish agri-food industry, into some of the largest export markets in the world.

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