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Emydex Door-to-Door in Junee Lamb, NSW, Australia

Emydex complete the system implementation with new customer in Australia, Junee Lamb, NSW

 

Junee Lamb is one of New South Wales’ leading sheep meat processors and exporters. With a focus on high quality chilled lamb for the domestic market as well as having significant export sales, Junee process over 3500 head of lambs daily. Junee also provides a service kill and boning operation for other customers such as major supermarket chains who wish to market their own product. All product is certified Halal and some product is processed as organic lamb.

Factory Floor Production Control System

Junee Lamb had a requirement to upgrade their existing factory floor production control system at the plant in Junee, as well as their Sydney wholesale and further processing systems, to a modern, flexible, user-friendly system which fully integrates all processes required for the procurement, slaughter, processing and sale of meat products.

Previously the company were operating with two separate factory floor data collection systems that were disconnected, and the company realised it would be more beneficial to their business to upgrade these systems to a single production management solution, offering one version of the truth, that could be tailored and customised to suit their specific business requirements.

Junee Lamb needed a system that would integrate with their existing back-office financial system, and also needed to incorporate an off-the-shelf label design system that allowed for the integration of foreign text in multiple languages, such as Arabic and Chinese.

Over the past 12 months, Emydex software engineers based in Australia, installed their Manufacturing Execution System (MES) across the entire business operations, including the lamb factory and wholesale centre. Emydex software modules implemented includes the Emydex Kill line & Payments module for stock procurement and payment, Carcass Management Module, Processing & Packing Module used for boning room production management, and the weigh-labelling of product, as well as the Emydex Warehouse Management module, used to manage and report on all factory stocks.

Many benefits have accrued from the implementation of Emydex, including the ability to cost stock purchased prior to processing, to determine a forward selling price. Another benefit is providing detailed costings reporting once skin returns, credits as well as all purchasing costs are known. Feedback to service kill operators and suppliers can be produced as soon as a lot is complete and emailed to customers.

For the domestic trade, the ability to quickly enter orders, and to produce consolidated production requirements and picking sheets, allows the orders to be accumulated during the day. Hanging product is weighed across an Emydex terminal, so invoices can be produced by delivery run from the terminal, as soon as loading is complete. This ensures accurate documentation is produced with invoices travelling with the deliveries. Similar functionality in the Sydney operation has allowed for significant growth with continued customer satisfaction.

Junee are a market-driven company who enjoy a reputation for top quality product and are seen as a market leader, especially into to the Asian market where the Junee Gold brand is recognised as one of the premier Australian brands. Consequently, virtually all stock is produced to order and is often labelled with customer order information (such as port marks) and often have complex, multi-language multi-label requirements.

Centralised Specification System

A key benefit of the system is having one centralised ‘specification’ system, where labels designs are stored with foreign text generated from the product specifications ‘real time’ using the actual text and thus not requiring images or conversion codes. All customer production requirements can be entered into a plan, which in turn generates the daily works orders, touch screen product buttons, all of which are linked to sales orders and labelling requirements. Order requirements eliminate costly over-production, and allow order fulfilment and shipping to be easily managed.

End to End Solution

By providing a fully integrated, ‘end to end’ solution Emydex have provided a platform where efficiencies have been gained in all areas of the business and allow for information to be readily available. Ease of use has ensured user acceptance has been high with minimal impact on the day to day running of the business as the system was rolled out. With 24-hour support in place, Junee can be assured that support is available 24x7 to provide comfort as the company goes ahead with plans to greatly expand the business over the next 12 months.

‘Having run the business across a number of disjointed systems previously, with little by way of fast-responding support, the business has greatly benefitted from have one, fully integrated, easy to use system. Testament to this is our recent and continuing smooth expansion, maintaining our reputation for top quality products and service. The Emydex system has provided significant benefits from its flexibility, ease of use and ability grow as we do. With Emydex now managing our ‘pasture to plate’ processes we feel confident we can meet the challenges as we expand into the future’.
Heath Newton, Managing Director - Junee Lamb

For enquiries contact sales@emydex.com or call Emydex on contact us

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HJ Nolan Salmon Filleting Yield Control System

HJ Nolan Ltd have been in business for 95 years, since 1912. The company sells premium seafood products worldwide, mainly smoked salmon, under the well-known ‘Nolans Seafoods’ brand. Today the company employs almost 300 people across its two Seafood processing facilities in Dublin, Ireland and Aberdeen in Scotland.

HJ Nolan approached Emydex Technology and SF Engineering in 2014, with a request to commission a new salmon filleting and trimming line from SF Engineering, integrated to an in-line real-time Yield and Efficiency reporting software system from Emydex Technology.

Sean Carolan, IT Manager with HJ Nolan’s in Dublin explains the background to the project, “before the Emydex and SF Engineering solution was implemented, all our salmon filleting was done manually. This resulted in us being unable to calculate our yields until the end of the working day, and this calculation was done with pen and paper. This process was time consuming and often lead to inaccuracies and mistakes. As our production started to ramp-up, we found it increasingly difficult to manage this process, and it became necessary to find a way to automate this process.”

Automated Yield Reporting

SF Engineering and Emydex set to work with Nolans to design and build the end-solution required. This exercise resulted in a SF Engineering salmon filleting & trimming conveyor line, complete with an In-feed holding bin, de-heading station, weigh hopper and a distribution conveyor that feeds the salmon to six salmon filleting operators working on the line. Each individual operator station consists of a buffer hopper, a holding hopper, a trimming table, an offal chute and a reset button.

SF Engineering Salmon Filleting and Trimming SystemSF Engineering Salmon Filleting and Trimming System

To operate the system, each salmon-filleter working on the conveyor line first presses their reset button. This triggers the holding hopper to retract, and a new salmon falls into the hopper from the buffer hopper. The filleter then removes the fish to complete their trimming tasks, and once completed, places the fillet back onto the magenta weighing conveyor. The conveyor records the weight of the fish, and then waits for a free space on the takeaway conveyor. Once free, the conveyor sends the fish off to the pin-bone machine. When the operator’s holding-bin is emptied, the operator presses the reset button, starting the whole process all over again.

Cloud-Hosted or On-Premise

During each operation cycle, Emydex’s Data Capture System (DCS), captures each individual filler’s production data, and calculates the batch yield in real-time. Sean Carolan explains “the Emydex software system allows us to capture accurate yield data; weight-on versus weight-off, as well as production throughput; time-on versus time-off, from each individual filleter in real-time. This information is stored in a central cloud-hosted Emydex database, that can be viewed by both operators on the line, as well as our production supervisors on an industrial monitor running Emydex in the factory.

Real-Time KPI Reporting

Displaying production data and KPIs as they are happening in real-time, tends to have a motivational effect on the filleters working on the line, and improves operator productivity. Emydex production reporting can also be accessed on client PCs in the back-office, as well as anywhere around the world via a smart-phone, given the system is hosted in the cloud”.

On-floor Production reporting monitor displays individual filleter yields and throughputs accurately in real-timeOn-floor Production reporting monitor displays individual filleter yields and throughputs accurately in real-time

Carolan Continues “The ability to export accurate information instantly from the Emydex system, has greatly improved the process by which the filleters are paid. Before the implementation of the Emydex system, the production supervisor would have had to manually calculate each filleters weights and rate of pay. This information can now be exported and sent directly to our accounts department. The individual yield of each filleter can now be much more closely monitored by their supervisor. This allows us to insure each filleter is maintaining a satisfactory yield throughout the day.”

Traceability Reporting

“In addition to Yield and efficiency reporting, Emydex is also recording and reporting on food chain traceability throughout the production process” outlines David McMahon, Emydex CEO. “traceability details recorded for each batch include the Emydex ITN (Internal Traceability number), Production run, Supplier, Harvest Number, Harvest Date, Product, Species and size. Same as for production reporting, traceability reporting is available instantly and accurately, from any device connected to the central database in the cloud. Optionally, the system can be hosting on-site/on-premises if required”.

Customer Support

Sean Carolan concludes “Emydex offered unwavering support to Nolans from the onset of this project. Throughout the initial design process, the implementation and the aftersales support, Emydex has maintained an unparalleled level of support and professionalism. It’s always a pleasure dealing with anyone from the Emydex team, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone in the market for reliable, well-supported factory floor software solution.”

 

About Emydex Technology: Emydex Technology is a leading supplier of Traceability reporting and Production Management Software systems to Meat, Fish and Food Processors around the world. Over 100 food processing factories, operating across 4 continents, use Emydex factory floor software systems to monitor, control and report on their Production yields, stocks, traceability, food quality, safety and compliance.

About SF Engineering: SF Engineering is an award-winning Irish engineering company that designs and manufacturers food processing and packaging solutions for the food industry globally. The company’s Engineering solutions are operating in meat, fish and food processing companies throughout Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Chile

About Emydex & SF Engineering: Emydex Technology and SF Engineering have worked on a number of joint software/hardware integration projects for shared customers over the past number of years. In addition to the salmon filleting line solution delivered to HJ Nolans, other joint projects including Emydex integration to an SF Engineering pork primal grading line, as well as integration to RFID controlled SF Engineering conveyor systems operating in a lamb Processing plant in the UK.

For enquiries contact sales@emydex.com or call Emydex on contact us

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Rosie & Jim Value Added Poultry Processor live on Emydex

Dublin – Ireland:
Rosie and Jim was established in 1997 when award winning craft butcher, Jimmy McLoughlin established Quality First Ltd and began producing gourmet chicken products for supply to butcher shops and restaurants. Today the company produces a wide range of premium quality, ready-to-cook gluten free breaded and battered chicken products.  They also produce a variety of delicious filled wraps.  All products are available chilled or frozen.

Order Control

Rosie and Jim approached Emydex in 2016 with a view to implementing a factory-wide Production Control and Traceability Reporting IT system door-to-door. The company had no existing factory floor IT system in place, operating manual processes instead, which meant excessive recording of internal processes manually on paper, which was both laborious and time-consuming, and offered little by way of real-time production control and traceability reporting.

The company had no real insight into the quantity or value of their existing stocks, resulting in procurement planning issues. Unsure of what current stocks were available to fulfil production orders, often resulted in over-ordering of stock, and the holding of excess stock of raw materials, dry goods and ingredients on-site than was needed.

Recipe Formulation

Another issue Rosie and Jim faced from their manual process was knowing how much each production batch cost to produce. Without knowing the precise amount of raw materials and ingredients going into each production batch, and without knowing the exact value of that stock, it was impossible to accurately calculate profit/loss and production yields.

Emydex’s Recipe Formulation Software system means that now, every item is scanned and weighed into a production job in the correct quantities. The system allows Rosie & Jim to track and record every item right down to the smallest measurement that was used in a production job. By doing this, Emydex determines the value of items used in production batches, allowing the system to calculate the cost of each production batch.

Real-Time Traceability Reporting

At Intake, Emydex allocates an internal traceability number (ITN) to each batch of supplier goods received, and the goods are labelled with barcodes and stored. From this point forward, the goods are tracked and traced by factory operators using hand-held scanning terminals, throughout the different stages of production, up to the point of sales order picking and dispatch, This allows for real-time traceability reporting throughout the plant, both for forward trace reporting from suppliers to end-customers, as well as backwards.

Sage Integration

Prior to go-live, Emydex was tightly integrated with Rosie & Jim’s existing Sage 200 accounting system, with Purchase Orders and Sales Orders pulled down from stage, and well as production data sent back to Sage for invoicing of customers and supplier payments.

Go-live

“We started using Emydex on the floor in two separate stages. First, we launched Emydex on our breading line while still using test data. This included the recipe blending and packing. By the end of the first week most of the production team using the system were already comfortable with using it. You could visibly see them speeding up when going through the individual screens.  

We also started to receive goods in from Intake onto the system. This has been simplest of part of the implementation. We soon after went live proper on the 1st of April. We first implemented Emydex on our mixes & tortilla line and began to pick our sales orders via the hand-held scanners. Overall, I feel the project was a successful implementation, and the new system has been well received by our production team, operators and supervisors, better than I could have expected”.

Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

Production Reporting

Rosie and Jim now have a comprehensive reporting structure on all aspects of their production processes. The Emydex back-office reporting module provides the company with a number of different views over their cost/value figures including Real-time stock inventory and valuation, Production costing, Production costing variances, Product usage reports, production yield reports and product giveaway reports.

Emydex also worked with Rosie and Jim to develop additional reports such as Production & packing time efficiency reports and daily stock movement reports.

“From a reporting side, by the end of the first week, our production manager and I started to see proper results with regards to yields, packing volumes and stock control. I would like to thank the Emydex team as they really helped, not only with the actual development but also with suggesting practical solutions to suit our processes e.g. line-side management.”

further comments by Peter Turner, Financial Controller with Rosie & Jim

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Emydex Partnership in Southern Africa

Johannesburg – South Africa:
Emydex Technology, based in Dublin Ireland, is a leading supplier of Factory Floor data capture, Production Reporting and Traceability Software systems to Meat, Fish, Poultry & Food processors around the world.

Emydex are pleased to announce details of an exclusive partnership agreement with Summit Process Solutions (SPS), based in Johannesburg, South Africa. SPS integrates factory floor Industrial hardware including weighing, labelling, inspection, processing, data capture, and IT systems to create tailor-made solutions for meat, fish, poultry and food processing companies operating in Southern Africa.

Summit Process Solutions

Summit Process Solutions partner with leading international suppliers of Industrial weighing, processing, labelling, packing and inspection systems such as Scanvaegt Systems in Denmark. Through such international partnerships, SPS are ideally placed to source, supply and maintain all Industrial hardware needed to operate Emydex software systems including Industrial touch-screen PCs, hand-held scanners, weighing scales and printers.

Lead by a hands-on, committed and experienced team comprising of Rodney Macer-Wright, Wilfred Koekemoer and Jeffrey Macer-Wright, SPS has over 50 years of combined Hardware & Software knowledge in the Southern African food industry.

“The partnership with Emydex enables Summit Process Solutions to provide Southern African food processors with comprehensive factory floor production systems with focus on full traceability, stock/warehouse management, yield and quality control. With the Emydex Factory Floor Software and the Scanvaegt weighing and data collection equipment, we can provide complete end to end factory floor software solutions to fit our customer’s requirements.” said Macer-Wright commenting on the Emydex partnership.

Meat Corporation Namibia

Emydex Technology have been active in the Southern African region since 2013 when they rolled out Emydex factory floor data capture, production control and traceability reporting systems to Meat Corporation Namibia (MeatCo)’s multi-site beef processing operations spread across Namibia. This installation included a full Emydex rollout to MeatCo’s head-quarter site in Windhoek that includes beef primal slaughter and deboning operations, a wholesale operation, value-added plant as well as a cannery operation. The Emydex solution deployed included kill line & payments, carcass management, processing and packing, warehousing & dispatch, value-added processing, yield and cost reporting, traceability, quality and compliance management.

Botswana Meat Commission

Emydex’s Packing and Processing software system has also been installed across Botswana Meat Commissions’ three beef production plants in Botswana at Lobatse, Francistown and Maun for Outer case marker (OCM) weighing and labelling operations in each plant. Plans are in place to complete the Emydex rollout from factory door-to-door in the group’s main HQ site in Lobatse by end of 2017. Furthermore, Emydex are about to begin implementation of the Emydex Coldstore Warehouse Management System in the Table Bay Cold Store in Cape Town South Africa.

Klein Karoo

In 2016 Emydex successfully installed its factory floor systems into Klein Karoo’s multi-site Abattoir, Deboning and Value added operations located in Oudtshoorn, Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam, South Africa. Klein Karoo being the largest Ostrich Processor in the world.

“Our partnership with Summit Process Solutions enables Emydex to provide a full turn-key solution to Southern African meat, fish, poultry and food processors by combining best-of-breed software solutions from Emydex, coupled with world-leading industrial hardware solutions that are supplied and maintained locally in Southern Africa by Summit Process Solutions. SPS have over 50 years’ experience working in our core industries in Southern Africa. They know the industry, they know the market, they know the customers. They are the ideal fit for Emydex as our dedicated partner and distributor within the region”

David McMahon, Emydex CEO

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Emydex Coldstore Management System Live in Dawn Meats UK

Halesowen – England:
Dawn Meats are one of the largest suppliers of Irish and British Beef and Lamb in Europe. They supply premium quality beef and lamb products to over 40 countries worldwide. Since 2007, Emydex software has been Dawn’s system of choice for factory floor data capture, production control, stock management and traceability reporting. Emydex iWAMS has been implemented as the groups standard solution in their 15 production sites located across Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and France.

Stock Management

In 2014 Dawn Meats bought a 99,000 sq ft distribution center in Birmingham, England for freezing, distributing and storing meat products. The Halesowen facility provides cold storage services for all of Dawn’s manufacturing plants in the UK.
Installed in 2015, the Emydex cold store warehouse system operating at the Halesowen site, provides Dawn Meats with a warehouse management system that manages, controls and reports on all cold storage processes at the plant. These processes include goods inwards, stock palletising, blast-freezing, stock put-away, sales order picking, container loading and order dispatch. In addition, the Emydex platform provides Dawn with the capability to carry out stock transfers, stock takes and stock reconciliation. This in turn provides the business (and entities owning the stock) with real-time accurate reporting of stocks.

Synchronized

Electronic links, which keep the sites Emydex systems synchronized with the Halesowen Emydex system, are in place between the Halesowen cold storage facility and each of Dawn’s production plants in the UK. These links are architected on Emydex’s proprietary ‘E-Transfer’ functionality. This enables the individual sites to send and receive real-time validation and reporting on all stock items shipped into and dispatched out of the cold store. Real-time transactional data on internal stock movements, pallet break-down and sales orders dispatched to customers are also sent via automated electronic E-Transfers.

ERP Integration

“Our requirement was to implement a solution in the Halesowen facility that would meet the needs of a cold storage business whilst also providing the individual sites with visibility into their cold-store stocks and all associated handling and storage costs. In our business model it was important to us that the sites retained the ability to select the individual units they wanted to be picked in order to best meet the needs of each customer.

It was clear that this would require tight integration between the production sites Emydex systems and whatever cold-storage solution was chosen. The Emydex Cold Storage system met most of the requirements of the business as standard. The inherent flexibility within the Emydex platform meant we were confident that we could work with their development team to tailor Emydex to fit our exact needs.

For example, Emydex were able to add functionality to the system to allow for box-level traceability throughout the blast freeze process. For our business, Emydex was definitely the right choice”.

Shane Slattery, CIO with Dawn Meats

Emydex software is integrated with Dawn’s central ERP system. This integration is architected using web-services to allow for complete control over the sales and purchase ordering processes. The ERP integration allows Dawn to draw down sales orders in real-time, manage picking rules, assign sales orders and print customer specific documentation.

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Help for Irish agri firms to move into African market

With over 1.2m sq km of land, South Africa comprises Mediterranean, subtropical and semi-desert regions, producing everything from deciduous, citrus and subtropical fruit to grain, wool, cut flowers, livestock and game.

Its farm holdings range in size from the vast fields of the Eastern Cape to subsistence-based production in deep, rural parts.

When things become quiet around the Irish countryside, South Africa’s counter-seasonality offers agritech and farm-machinery producers an additional southern hemisphere market to provide a counterbalance to the end of a busy period back at home.

While some agricultural markets ‘down under’ have a strong indigenous farm machinery heritage, South Africa has a preference for imported European and North American equipment.

The good news is that, despite the weak value of the South African rand, European exports can compete on price. Irish companies active in the market include farm-machinery producers Keenan and McHale and food-processing software provider Emydex.

Other potential opportunities offered by South Africa’s large agricultural sector include animal nutrition and veterinary products, dairy and meat-processing equipment, alternative-energy solutions and water-saving technologies.

South Africa is the largest animal-feed producer on the continent, and there’s an ongoing opportunity to supply supplements to feed manufacturers, although this will mean taking market share from existing players.

Meat processing remains a large sector, particularly as the consumption of protein is increasing with a growing middle class. With the introduction of minimum-wage legislation there is a heavy focus on efficiency, with many South African farmers and processors looking to new technologies to increase productivity.

In selecting a South African market representative, companies should look for an agent or distributor that can provide an after-sales service and offer market reach right into the whole of the southern Africa continent. They may also be best advised to consider some of the smaller equipment suppliers, as larger distributors typically already have a full complement of partnerships in place and are less likely to take on new products.

In November, we will be taking a group of Irish farm equipment and agtech specialists on a market study tour to South Africa, providing an ideal opportunity to get a feel for the market, meet potential partners and showcase their products.

The visit will also take in Kenya, where agriculture accounts for 20pc of GDP, and tea and horticultural products are the country’s largest exports.

The Kenyan market represents yet a different opportunity again. The sector is characterised by small-scale farming, with family businesses typically operating on one-to-three hectare farms. However, the country is well capable of handling productivity gains thanks to a variety of climatic conditions, allowing for good grain, sugar cane, coffee and tea production.

Young Kenyans, who are leaving office jobs to venture into farming, are receptive to modernisation, and agriculture is central to the government’s economic development strategy. In 2010, Kenya signed a comprehensive Africa agriculture development programme to address constraints such as low investment and limited access to technology.

Irish animal-health company Cross Vetpharm has operations in Kenya, and those active elsewhere in East Africa include MagGrow, a start-up commercialising eco-efficient spraying technology; Hermitage Genetics, which specialises in pig breeding, and milking parlour specialist DairyMaster. There’s no doubt that other Irish firms selling to the agricultural sector could also look to Africa.

We here in Enterprise Ireland’s Johannesburg office can help with information, introductions and itinerary planning for market visits.

Natasha Siniscalchi-Dönmez is a Enterprise Ireland senior market adviser for Sub-Saharan Africa

Sunday Indo Business

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