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A new Dawn for Quality systems

Dawn Meats Group, one of Europe’s leading meat processing companies, sought to streamline its factory-floor Quality Management System with Emydex.

 

Meet the client

Dawn Meats Group is a family-owned business established in 1980 in Waterford, Ireland. The company has grown to become one of the largest and most important beef and sheep processing groups in the industry. The group employs over 8,000 people across twelve countries, including ten sites in Ireland and thirteen in the UK, and exports to over 50 countries worldwide.

Every year, Dawn Meats Group processes over 1 million cattle and 3.5 million sheep, generating more than €2.5 billion in turnover for the company and contributing over €1.67 billion to rural economies through 30,000 farms in Ireland and the UK.

The numbers are staggering, and so is their success.

 

The Opportunity

Dawn Meats developed its own in-house quality management system, which largely relied on manual, paper-based checks throughout its factory floors.

While this was rigorous and helped to maintain the company’s highest quality products, it was inefficient, creating delays, tons of paper, and hours of data entry. The old manual way of working involved lengthy printing, handing out, filling in, returning, checking, countersigning, and storing paper records. On top of that, files had to be physically retrieved in the event of an audit or to trend data.

For the past decade (since 2013), Emydex has been developing an Electronic Quality Management System (EQMS) capable of being used in single plants as well as across multi-plant group processors like Dawn Meats Group

Emydex’s Quality Management System is a software system that allows food processors carry out their factory and food safety quality and audit checks on tablets, reporting instantly in the back-office, replacing all paper-based quality check sheets on the factory floor.

A perfect fit for Dawn Meats Group.

“​We selected Emydex, a long-standing partner of ours, due to Emydex’s understanding of our food production facilities, their excellent software development ability and personal project management delivery,” said Julia Hewerdine, Group Food Safety & Quality Project Manager in Dawn Meats Group.

 

There were several drivers behind Dawn Meats Group’s decision to select Emydex:

 

One System

The first was Emydex gave Dawn Meats Group one single system, with Emydex’s quality module sitting alongside all other Emydex factory floor MES, Production and Warehouse Management modules on one common platform.

“We have worked with Emydex over the past decade on the production and traceability side, so we trust them”, commented John Coleman, Dawn Group Food Safety and Quality Manager.

 

Cloud or On-Premises

The EQMS system can be installed on-premises or in the cloud. Emydex doesn’t force its customers to operate their QMS out of the cloud; they can install it on-prem if necessary.

“Emydex has had a tremendous impact on our shop floor quality data collection on site, as well as safeguarding completion of checks in a scheduled and timely manner.  Its reliability and speed have ensured that workflows carried out have been given full attention, and no corners are cut.” said Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team

 

Online and Offline Mode

Another key differentiator is that the system can work offline as well as online for all compatible mobile devices, using local databases. This means operators can switch to offline mode when capturing quality data in areas with poor or zero Wi-Fi coverage.

“Our QA’s like the systems’ ability to save checks within the factory, without needing to return the checks to folders which would previously have occurred. The system’s speed and performance has allowed for more thorough and detailed checks on the line, as well as increasing their time available to carry out additional checks, without needing to carry out tedious admin tasks.”, commented Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team.

 

Flexibility

Finally, the system is very configurable in-house including an easy-to-use quality workflow builder tool. This function allows in-house QC personnel (non-IT people) to design and build their own Quality workflows in-house, including QC surveys, QC check-sheets and quality audits.

“I like how their QMS system is flexible, and how we can configure it to how we wanted to work – not something you get with an out-of-the-box solution. This flexibility means we can build our own workflows ourselves, not involving Emydex nor internal IT.” added John Coleman, Dawn Meats Group, Food Safety and Quality Manager.

 

Going Live

The Emydex Quality Management System has been operating in Dawn Meats Group’s Irish & UK facilities for over five years now. Having first gone live in two Irish plants in 2019, today the system is operating in Dawn Meat’s seven primal processing plants in Ireland, as well as a further seven group primal processing plants in the UK, fourteen plants so far, with further roll-outs underway, including three retail processing plants in the UK.

At this point Dawn’s group technical QC team have configured internally almost 500 separate QC workflows in Emydex including for example, Abattoir and Boning Hall pre-op checks, GMP audits, metal detector checks, glass and hard plastic, knife register, and attendance checks etc. Once built centrally, such workflows can then be used across all the group’s sites.

 

The Results

Emydex EQMS helps Dawn Meats Group streamline the QMS processes across its factories and ensure they are working to the most effective QMS system. Standardising the QMS and FSM systems across the group improves compliance and shares best practices throughout all the facilities.

“External auditors have had a positive outlook on the Emydex quality system, frequently commenting on its benefits of generating reports, assigning close-outs, and collating data at a click of a button.” said Alan McCormack, Dawn Meats Technical Team

 

Using the Document Management System included within the system, sites can share generic documents and processes and tailor the specifics to the site. This reduces time lost in writing up documents and figuring out procedures and risk assessments.

The system creates actions, alerts, notifications and alarms in real-time and automatically tells them when they are out of compliance, forcing the immediate implementation of corrective actions.

“The less obvious savings are evident too – less time and effort, fewer mistakes and corrections, reduced hold-ups, etc. I can see if people are making the required quality checks and if they are making them at exactly the right times.” John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland

 

It improves compliance and reduces issues in announced and unannounced audits, reducing risk with defective product, product recalls and customer satisfaction.

The Emydex system frees up resources to drive product quality improvements and frees up archive space and storage. It will give central management a holistic view through instant visibility of all factories in one centralised system, making KPI reporting easier and maximising safety, quality and compliance.

“The result is that resources have been freed up. Less paperwork, collection is instant, no errors, less time, no printing, archive space has been freed up, we have instant and easy retrieval of documents – everything has improved and is more accurate.” commented John Coleman, Dawn Group Technical Manager in Ireland

 

Finally, this accurate QMS data can drive operational processes and business decisions, helping continuous improvement by providing instant effect data.

“The Emydex Quality System is an innovative, adaptable software solution which fulfils the needs of Dawn Meats Group and continues to evolve through more areas of our factories, making them fit for the future.”
Julia Hewerdine, Group Food Safety & Quality Project Manager in Dawn Meats Group

 

Don’t wait! Embrace the future of quality management with electronic quality management
software.

If you want to learn more – contact Emydex in any of our global market offices in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or North America

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Silver Fern Farms welcomes Emydex to Fourth Beef plant in Te Aroha, New Zealand

Silver Fern Farms Expands Emydex Integration in Te Aroha

The Silver Fern Farms Emydex implementation continued following successful rollouts of the factory floor MES system in its primary beef processing plants in Belfast, Dargaville, and Hawera. Earlier this month (12/13 October), the fourth beef primal processing plant in Te Aroha, North Island, New Zealand, went live.

Commenting on the go-live, Matt Ballard, Chief Transformation Officer with Silver Fern Farms, said “this deployment went smoothly and the adoption by our frontline teams has been excellent”. 
 

Emydex rollouts are planned to continue in 2025, with the beef processing plants in Finegand and Pacific set to come online with the Emydex for primary processing, production control and traceability reporting.

 

Emydex CEO, David McMahon, added, “A huge thanks to our Emydex team working on the SFF project, including Carne De Vreede, Saffi Muhammed, Ashley Buckle, and Felsi Judith Lawrence in Emydex New Zealand, as well as Carl Brennan in Emydex Australia who flew over to New Zealand to support another successful go-live with no Emydex stoppages.”

 

If you want to learn more – contact Emydex in any of our global market offices in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or North America

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Eliminate costly carton rejections with Emydex and Meat Messaging

The international trade of food products has over time become highly competitive with many large multinational companies emerging to satisfy the demand for the supply of high quality, safe and affordable products.
 

In competitive market conditions, the access to export markets is being increasingly underpinned by effective and transparent traceability, quality and food safety compliance and proof of authenticity and origin. To better fulfil these requirements, innovative integrated software systems that can easily adapt to changing regulatory environments is key to securing access to these markets and increasing efficiency across the value chain.
 

Emydex factory floor software for meat, fish, and food processing, integrated with Meat Messaging is one such solution.


Meat Messaging was developed by the Australian meat industry including organisations such as AUS-MEAT, DAWE, AMPC, AMIC and MLA to increase the market access to the US for Australian meat exporters and to reduce the number of rejects caused by missing or incorrect port marking of cartons costing the industry an estimated AUD14.5 million per year.
 

What is Meat Messaging?

The system provides an electronic method to send a comprehensive list of GS1 labelled carton records, forming part of an export shipment including export certifications to a centralised cloud storage and indexing system and making that information available at the point of import.

Importers are presented with all the relevant traceability information through Meat Messaging to correctly identify cartons on a shipment and are now able to re-mark the cartons if any port mark non-conformances are identified. This process virtually eliminates the rejection of cartons due to port mark errors or omissions.
 

Key Requirements

Two key requirements need to be fulfilled to integrate with the Meat Messaging system. These are the creation of GS1 barcoded cartons and records, and also to have the ability to send the shipment details and carton records to the Meat Messaging platform.

By making use of the Emydex Packing and Labelling solution which allows for the creation of the GS1 labelled carton records and the Emydex Sales Order Dispatch functionality in conjunction with the Emydex Meat Messaging web service, both requirements are covered.
Emydex has worked closely with the AMPC and industry producers to fully integrate the Meat Messaging system into the Emydex Factory Floor software modules to provide an easy to use and efficient interface.

This ensures that our customers can capitalize on the latest technological developments in the market and ensure that their products have the best chance of reaching their destination, gaining full value from each export to the US.
 

If you want to learn more – contact Ireland, Australia, South Africa or North America offices

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Kill Line Live in Central Agri Group, Victoria, Australia

In 2016 Central Agri Group, formerly Central Meat Exports, re-opened their newly refurbished beef plant in Trafalgar as Victoria Valley Meat Exports. This is a state of the art, fully integrated, beef processing plant in Victoria, Australia. As part of the Central Agri Group of companies, VVME is focused on major export markets including the Middle East and South East Asia.

Having been in operation for several months, it was determined that the current systems did not meet the needs of this modern, export focussed business, as the various modules were not integrated and lacked the features found in a modern, integrated system. Processes such as interfacing to the NLIS database, preparing the kill agenda, generating payments and reporting were all complicated and in some cases completely manual.

In light of these requirements, VVME contacted Emydex with a view to replacing their existing system, starting with the slaughter floor and then moving on to the boning hall including stations for into-boning, offal packing and carcass dispatch, with carton dispatch to follow.

 

Kill Line Software

The kill floor went live recently with Emydex’s kill line software systems running on four on-floor data capture computers starting from an NLIS scanning station that checks the animal status in real -time against the NLIS database through to Dentition, Carcass defect and Weigh-Grading stations.

The Emydex back-office system allows for the kill agenda to be generated from bookings made earlier, many of which are themselves created by a direct import of the XML ‘purchase advice’ from the various sale-yards, with all associated costs and individual animal RFID details attached.

Data from the slaughter floor is approved, which then generates a payment invoice (recipient created tax invoice) to the supplier with very little manual manipulation using flexible payment grids. The kill data is loaded directly from Emydex to the NLIS database again streamlining the processes and adding efficiencies.

 

Electronic Quality Management System

With the slaughter floor fully live, the company is now moving ahead to implement the next phases over the next few months. The final step will be to incorporate the Emydex ‘Quality Management’ system which will integrate the Production processes with a Quality system which, being Cloud based, could potentially be expanded to include Central Agri Groups other processing facilities in other locations.

Commenting shortly after the initial Emydex system go-live at the plant, Colin Reidy, IT and QA Manager for the Central Agri Group stated:

“To be honest, that was the smoothest rollout I have ever been involved in. Even if you take the minor changes performed today, the system worked as intended with little to no intervention.

Ian’s knowledge combined with Carl’s skills made the last few improvements today practical and worthwhile.

The operators all responded positively and actively engaged with both the Emydex team and the software system.

As for the office, I walked in at 5am as normal and 5 mins later I ran out of things to do. Normally I am hard pressed to have the agenda out by 6:15 let alone get any QA checks done. Then this afternoon, after a couple hours playing with the pricing we had the final feedbacks done by 2:30pm - a task that quite easily takes me to 6pm most nights.

So to say I’m happy is an understatement.”

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Beef Processing Software Live in MeatCo Namibia

WINDHOEK – NAMIBIA:

The Emydex implementation team returned to Ireland after the latest phase of Emydex system deployments at MeatCo’s two main production sites located in Windhoek and Okahandja, Namibia. At this stage Emydex’s factory floor data capture and production reporting software is now operational from factory door-to-door in both of MeatCo’s main beef primal processing plants, from Kill line through to boning hall processing & packing, sales order picking & dispatch.

In addition to their main primal processing plants, Emydex is now also installed in two further processing plants on the MeatCo Windhoek site that are the Wholesale and Cannery processing plants. Current plans are for MeatCo’s IT staff to themselves complete the Emydex systems roll-out to its other two beef processing plants located North of the veterinary fence in Oshikati and Katima Mulilo. Both deployments will be supported remotely by Emydex’s Implementation team of developers based in Emydex’s HQ in Dublin, Ireland.
At this point there are just under 100 Emydex data capture devices (consisting of PC terminals and hand-held scanners) installed across MeatCo’s four plants operational with Emydex, that include a number of Animal Health and Quality Assurance inspection stations on both Kill line systems, as well as Industrial PC stations covering Dentition, Grading, Primal labelling, Carton Packing, VET Seals, Recipe formulation and Dry Goods stock management.

The Emydex system in MeatCo also provides functionality for 3rd party carcass intake, carcass splitting as well as dispatch. The system is fully integrated to MeatCo’s group wide-ERP system (Sage X3), and has interfaces built to a number of 3rd party Cold Stores in both Africa and Europe.

Having tested and implemented the Emydex kill line & payments system in the Okahandja plant, the same kill line system was later installed in Windhoek over a weekend, going live the following Monday. A fast paced install. “The MeatCo kill line is unique compared to our European kill line systems”, said Emydex CEO David McMahon, “Grading is carried out over two separate stations for example, one per side, allowing different destinations to be associated with each side of an animal, allowing for condemnation or part condemnation of only one side of an animal.”

Commenting on the completion of this main phase of the Emydex project that took just over 12 months to complete, McMahon said “MeatCo have been the ideal customer for Emydex to work with. Highly professional and organised with regard to working with our development and implementation teams on the planning, testing, training and go-live phases of the project. The project ran smoothly over the past 12 months, and we’re delighted to hear now that MeatCo feel they have the sufficient knowledge, in-house capabilities and confidence to continue themselves with completion of our system roll-out to their two remaining processing plants. Our support team will be on-hand to support them 24/7 should it be required.”

Nico Weck, MeatCo’s Group Chief Financial Officer said “Now that the Emydex installation is complete in both our main processing operations, we have a robust Traceability control and reporting system in place that provides our management team with real-time feedback on our production processes. The flexibility that is inherent within Emydex means we can quickly and easily add additional reporting as it is required by the business. ”
For more information on our Beef Processing Software click here

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Traceability System Live in La Rousse Foods

DUBLIN/BELFAST – IRELAND:
With operations located in Dublin and Belfast, La Rousse Foods specialise in the supply of fine foods to premium food establishments since 1992. Acquired by the Swiss-based food group Aryzta in 2015, the company has more than 1,300 corporate customers in Ireland, and have their own catering butchery, cheese-maturing room and chocolate lab. La Rousse offer a wide range of fresh, seasonal and innovative premium produce from a network of local and international producers.

La Rousse approached Emydex in 2014 with a requirement to implement a robust factory floor Traceability and Production management system to replace manual operations in both their Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. La Rousse were looking for a factory floor IT system that would provide them with real-time, accurate reporting on production, yields and Stocks, with full forwards and backwards food chain Traceability from factory door to door. For shop floor equipment La Rousse opted to implement Bizerba industrial weighing scales, harsh environment terminals as well as printers.

They were previously operating a paper based Traceability and Quality Assurance recording and reporting system, which was time consuming to both administer and report on. Stock control was also a manual operation which was labour intensive and time consuming. Previously the Cheese Operations area operated with a Microsoft Dynamics Nav system, whereby Purchase Orders for Intake were keyed directly into a Nav form running on an office PC located at Cheese Intake.

Weights and traceability information were later keyed in manually against the purchase orders. La Rousse identified a requirement for a software system that fully integrated with Navision in real time and replaced the manual in-put of weights and traceability information, as well as to manage the processing, packing, order picking and dispatch of cheeses to end-customers.

In parallel, La Rousse were planning to double the size of their existing catering butchery operations by building a new purpose-built state-of-the-art butchery on a site adjacent to their existing operation in Dublin. For this new operation, La Rousse also needed a factory floor system capable of production managing this new production facility from factory door-to-door.

Cheese Processing Software

Phase one of the project saw the rollout of Emydex’s Production Management Software to the Cheese Operations covering intake, processing & packing, picking & dispatch, returns both to/from suppliers and customers and QC Hold.  Due to the flexible nature of the software, Emydex were able to integrate to la Rousse’s existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, providing a seamless real-time interface between both systems.

Packing and Processing Software

Phase two was a much more substantial project seeing the rollout of Emydex’s Packing & Processing software module to the new catering butchery operation running on fifteen  Bizerba  industrial terminals, connected to  Bizerba Industrial Weighing scales and printers covering operations such as Intake, Debagging, Deboning, Dry Aging, Preparation Lines, Metal Detection and Packing. Emydex’s Warehouse management module is also installed, running on a number of intelligent handheld scanning terminals covering Internal stock movements as well as sales order picking and dispatch.

Today La Rousse now have a comprehensive Production management software system that is fully integrated with their back-office ERP system.

Commenting on the Emydex project, David McMahon, Emydex CEO said “La Rousse Foods were a great fit customer for Emydex to work with. A professional run company from the outset, the La Rousse Foods project team had a clear vision as to their system needs, with defined project objectives and requirements. They were insistent in seeking to understand the precise inputs and outputs to each and every stage of their production processes, with the result that today they have an Emydex system that provides both bullet-proof traceability processes, as well as accurate and real-time accurate reporting on Production, Yields and Stocks.”

Stuart Campbell, General Manager with La Rousse Foods added “Emydex have provided us with a robust Factory Floor Traceability and Production Management system for both our Cheese Processing and Butchery Operations. Our Management team now have accurate real time reporting on production, yields and stocks as well as full forwards and backwards food chain traceability from factory door to door.”

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